fcibrarp  of  <the  t:heoio0icai  gtminavy 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 


PRESENTED  BY 

Dr.  Thomas  0.  Pears 

BR  121  .D43  1909  c.l 
Denney,  James,  1856-1917 
Jesus  and  the  gospel 


J^*1  "*; 

JESUS  AND  THE  GOSPEK. 

CHRISTIANITY     JUSTIFIED 
IN    THE    MIND    OF    CHRIST 

BY 

JAMES     DENNEY,    D.  D. 

PROFESSOR  OF   NEW   TESTAMENT   LANGUAGE 

LITERATURE   AND  THEOLOGY,  UNITED  FREE 

CHURCH    COLLEGE,    GLASGOW ;    AUTHOR  OF 

"THE  DEATH  OF  CHRIST" 


Tiva  /xc  Xeyere  elvat,; 


NEW   YORK 

A.  C.   ARMSTRONG  &  SON 

3  &  5  WEST  EIGHTEENTH  STREET 
MCMIX 


K.  ^    ' 


COPYRIGHT,   1908,   BY 
A.  C.  ARMSTRONG  &  SON 
SECOND   PRINTING,  MAY,   19G9 


UXORI    DILECTISSIMAE 


PREFACE 

The  Introduction  to  this  book  makes  its  purpose  suffi- 
ciently clear,  and  a  preface  is  hardly  needed  except  to 
indicate  the  readers  whom  the  writer  would  wish  to 
reach. 

The  argument  appeals,  on  the  one  hand,  to  those 
who  are  members  of  Christian  Churches  and  to  the 
Churches  themselves.  Amid  the  vast  unsettlement  of 
opinion  which  has  been  produced  by  the  emancipation 
of  the  mind  and  its  exercise  on  the  general  tradition  of 
Christianity,  it  calls  attention  anew  to  the  certainty  of  the 
things  which  we  have  been  taught.  It  demonstrates,  as 
the  writer  believes,  that  the  attitude  to  Christ  which 
has  always  been  maintained  in  the  Church  is  the  one 
which  is  characteristic  of  the  New  Testament  from 
beginning  to  end,  and  that  this  attitude  is  the  only  one 
which  is  consistent  with  the  self-revelation  of  Jesus 
during  His  life  on  earth.  But  it  makes  clear  at  the 
same  time  that  this  Christian  attitude  to  Jesus  is  all 
that  is  vital  to  Christianity,  and  that  it  is  not  bound 
up,  as  it  is  often  supposed  to  be,  with  this  or  that  in- 
tellectual construction  of  it,  or  with  this  or  that  definition 
or  what  it  supposes  or  implies.  The  Church  must  bind 
its  members  to  the  Christian  attitude  to  Christ,  but  it 
has  no  right  to  bind  them  to  anything  besides.     It  can 


viii  JESUS  AND  THE  GOSPEL 

never  overcome  its  own  divisions,  it  can  never  appeal 
with  the  power  of  a  unanimous  testimony  to  the  world, 
till  both  these  truths  are  recognised  to  the  full. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  argument  appeals  to  those 
who  are  outside  of  the  Churches,  who  do  not  take  up 
the  Christian  attitude  to  Christ,  and  who  on  general 
philosophical  grounds,  as  they  would  say,  decline  even 
to  discuss  it.  To  them  it  is  simply  an  appeal  to  look  at 
the  facts.  They  have  a  place  for  Jesus  in  their  world, 
but  it  is  not  the  place  which  Christian  faith  gives  Him. 
It  is  the  hope  of  the  writer  that  he  may  convince  some 
that  it  is  not  the  place  which  He  claims.  This  is  surely 
a  serious  consideration.  The  mind  of  Christ  is  the 
greatest  reality  with  which  we  can  come  into  contact 
in  the  spiritual  world,  and  it  is  not  treating  it  with  the 
respect  which  is  its  due,  if  we  decide  beforehand,  as  so 
many  do,  that  Christ  can  only  have  in  the  life  and  faith 
of  humanity  the  same  kind  of  place  as  others  who  are 
spoken  of  as  the  founders  of  religions.  The  section  of 
the  book  entitled  The  Self-Revelation  of  Jesus  is  an 
attempt  to  bring  out  the  significance  which  Jesus  had,  in 
His  own  mind,  in  relation  to  God  and  man.  This  can 
be  done,  as  the  writer  is  convinced,  in  a  way  which  is 
historically  unimpeachable;  and  unless  we  are  pre- 
pared summarily  to  set  aside  Christ's  consciousness  of 
Himself,  it  is  fatal  to  such  appreciations  of  Him  as  have 
just  been  referred  to.  To  be  a  Christian  means,  in  one 
aspect  of  it,  to  take  Christ  at  His  own  estimate;  and  it  is 
one  step  to  this  to  feel  that  He  is  putting  the  most  serious 
of  all  questions  when  He  asks,  Who  say  ye  that  I  am  ? 


PREFACE  ix 

Much  of  the  indifference  to  Christianity  in  certain  cir- 
cles comes  from  the  refusal  to  treat  this  question  seriously. 
It  would  fulfil  the  deepest  desire  of  the  writer  if  what  he 
has  said  of  the  self-revelation  of  Jesus  prevailed  with  any 
one  who  has  regarded  it  as  an  unreal  question  to  take  it  up 
in  earnest,  and  to  let  the  Christ  who  is  historically  attested 
in  the  gospels  freely  appeal  to  his  mind,  not  as  an  illus- 
tration of  some  philosophical  theorem  of  his  own  about 
God  or  Man,  but  as  the  Sovereign  Person  that  He  was 
and  is. 

The  writer  wishes  to  express  his  thanks  to  Messrs. 
T.  and  T.  Clark  for  the  use  they  have  allowed  him  to 
make  of  an  article  on  Preaching  Christ  contributed  by 
him  to  their  Dictionary  of  Christ  and  the  Gospels. 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 

PAGE 

THE  PLACE  OF  CHRIST  IN  NEW  TESTAMENT  FAITH, 
AND  THE  QUESTION  WHETHER  THIS  PLACE  IS 
THAT  WHICH   HE    CLAIMED   FOR   HIMSELF  .  .  I 


BOOK  I 

CHRISTIANITY  AS  IT  IS  EXHIBITED   IN  THE 
NEW   TESTAMENT 

INTRODUCTION  :     THE    UNITY    AND    VARIETY    OF    THE 
NEW    TESTAMENT 


I.  CHRIST    IN    PRIMITIVE    CHRISTIAN    PREACHING 

II  CHRIST    IN    THE  FAITH  OF  PAUL       . 

HI.  CHRIST  IN   THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  HEBREWS 

TV.  CHRIST  IN  THE   FIRST  EPISTLE  OF  PETER 


9 

12 

19 

39 
42 


V.    CHRIST   IN   THE    EPISTLE    OF   JAMES  ...         44 

xi 


Xll 


JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 


VI.   CHRIST    IN    THE    EPISTLE    OF    JUDE    AND    IN    THE 

SECOND    EPISTLE  OF  PETER  ....         47 


VH.    CHRIST   IN   THE    SYNOPTIC   GOSPELS 

(a)  The  Gospel  according  to  Mark 

(b)  The  Gospel  according  to  Matthew 

(c)  The  Gospel  according  to  Luke 

VHI.   CHRIST    IN    THE    JOHANNINE    WRITINGS 

(a)  The  Apocalypse 

(b)  The  Epistles   of   John 

(c)  The  Gospel  according  to  John 


SUMMARY   AND   TRANSITION 


SO 

52 

55 
60 

64 
65 
7i 

77 

90 


BOOK  II 

THE  HISTORICAL  BASIS   OF  THE  CHRISTIAN 
FAITH 


I.  The  Resurrection  of  Jesus. 

THE  EASTER  FAITH  AND  THE  EASTER  MESSAGE 
THI.    OLDEST    HISTORICAL    EVIDENCE 


99 


102 


MORAL   CONSIDERATIONS   INVOLVED   IN   A   TRUE   APPRE- 
CIATION   OF  IT IIO 


CONTENTS  xiii 

PAGE 

THE     HISTORICAL    AND     THE     SPIRITUAL    EVIDENCE    AS 


COMBINED    IN   I    COR.    XV. 


THE   APPEARANCES   OF  THE   RISEN  JESUS 

Difficulties  as  to  their  order 

Progressive   materialisation 

Difficulties  as  to  the  scene  of  the  appearings 


118 

126 
126 
129 

132 


FUNCTION    OF    THE    EVANGELISTS    IN  RELATION   TO  THE 

RESURRECTION 1 38 

II.  The  Self-Revelation  of  Jesus. 

(a)  Preliminary  critical  considerations. 

dogmatic  preconceptions  to  be  excluded       .        .144 

character  of  the  evangelic  documents    .       .       .145 

idea  that  historical  criticism  is  irrelevant  to 

christianity 149 

idea    that    its    presuppositions    are    fatal    to 

christianity 153 

historical  criticism   and   the  gospel  according 

TO   MARK 156 

HISTORICAL      CRITICISM      OF      THE      OTHER      PRIMITIVE 

SOURCE — V 168 


xiv  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

(b)  Detailed  Study  of  the  earliest  sources  as  illustrating  the 
selj-consciousness  oj  Jesus. 


PAGE 


^         THE     BAPTISM    OF    JESUS        .  .  •  •  •  •      J77 

THE    TEMPTATIONS *86 

JESUS  AND  THE  TWELVE  I  THE  CONDITIONS    OF    DISCIPLE- 

SHIP I92 

THE    SERMON    ON    THE    MOUNT 214 

THE    HEALING    OF    THE    CENTURION'S    SERVANT:    FAITH 

IN   JESUS 226 

JESUS   AND   JOHN   THE   BAPTIST 228 

THE  GREAT  THANKSGIVING  OF  JESUS        ....      236 

ISOLATED  EXPRESSIONS  IN  WHICH  JESUS*  CONSCIOUSNESS 
OF     HIMSELF     IS     REVEALED:      Matt.     II20ff-,     I230, 
I20,4I,«     I316f#j    2334ff. 247 

PASSAGES  IN   WHICH  JESUS  SPEAKS  OF  HIMSELF  AS   THE 

SON   OF   MAN  .  255 

MARK'S  HISTORY  THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  SON  OF  GOD        .      269 

A  TYPICAL  duvdfllS  OR  MIGHTY  WORK  IN  WHICH  JESUS' 
CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  HIMSELF  IS  REVEALED  :  FAITH  IN 
JESUS .271 


CONTENTS  xv 

PAGE 

THE      BRIDEGROOM      AND      THE      CHILDREN      OF      THE 

BRIDECHAMBER 279 

THE    UNPARDONABLE    SIN    IN    MARK          ....  283 

THE  MESSIAH  AND  THE  CROSS  :    Mark  8  27-IO  tf         .           .  284 

THE  TRIUMPHAL  ENTRY  INTO  JERUSALEM           .           .           .  307 

THE  WICKED  HUSBANDMEN  :   SERVANTS  AND  THE  SON       .  308 

DAVID'S  SON  AND  DAVID'S  LORD 3II 

THE    DATE    OF   THE    PAROUSIA 313 

THE    LAST    SUPPER 315 

THE   FINAL   CONFESSION 324 

CONCLUSION 

THE  ONE  CHRISTIAN   FAITH  VINDICATED  IN  THE  MIND  OF 

CHRIST 329 

OBJECTION    BASED    ON    THE    IRRELEVANCE     OF     HISTORY 

TO  FAITH 330 

OBJECTION    BASED    ON     THE     UNRELIABLENESS    OF    THE 

HISTORY  IN  QUESTION 332 

THE  RIGHT  OF  EVANGELICAL  CHRISTIANITY  SECURED        .  336 

THE  RIGHT  OF  INTELLECTUAL  LIBERTY  SECURED         .  337 


xvi  JESUS  AND  THE  GOSPEL 

PAGE 

ATTITUDE     OF    INDIVIDUALS     AND     OF     CHURCHES     TO 

THESE    CONCLUSIONS 34° 

THEIR   BEARING   ON  THE   UNION  OF  CHURCHES         .           .  343 

SIMPLIFICATION  OF  THEOLOGICAL  CREEDS  FALLACIOUS       .  345 

A  UNITING  CONFESSION  OF  FAITH 350 

OBJECTIONS  CONSIDERED 352 

THE  ESSENCE  OF  CHRISTIANITY  AND  HOW  TO  SECURE  IT    .  358 

INDEX  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT  PASSAGES        ....  363 


INTRODUCTION 

When  we  open  the  New  Testament  we  find  ourselves 
in  presence  of  a  glowing  religious  life.  There  is  nothing 
in  the  world  which  offers  any  real  parallel  either  to  this 
life,  or  to  the  collection  of  books  which  attests  it.  The 
soul,  which  in  contemporary  literature  is  bound  in  shal- 
lows and  in  miseries,  is  here  raised  as  on  a  great  tidal 
wave  of  spiritual  blessing.  Nothing  that  belongs  to  a 
complete  religious  life  is  wanting,  neither  convictions 
nor  motives,  neither  penitence  nor  ideals,  neither  vo- 
cation nor  the  assurance  of  victory.  And  from  be- 
ginning to  end,  in  all  its  parts  and  aspects  and  elements, 
this  religious  life  is  determined  by  Christ.  It  owes  its 
character  at  every  point  to  Him.  Its  convictions  are 
convictions  about  Him.  Its  hopes  are  hopes  which  He 
has  inspired  and  which  it  is  for  Him  to  fulfil.  Its  ideals 
are  born  of  His  teaching  and  His  life.  Its  strength  is 
the  strength  of  His  spirit.  If  we  sum  it  up  in  the  one 
word  faith,  it  is  faith  in  God  through  Him— a  faith 
which  owes  to  Him  all  that  is  characteristic  in  it,  all  that 
distinguishes  it  from  what  is  elsewhere  known  among 
men  by  that  name. 

This,  at  least,  is  the  prima  jacie  impression  which 
the  New  Testament  makes  upon  a  reader  brought  up  in 
the  Christian  Church.  The  simplest  way  to  express  it 
is  to  say  that  Christianity  as  it  is  represented  in  the 
New  Testament  is  the  life  of  faith  in  Jesus  Christ.  It 
is  a  life  in  which  faith  is  directed  to  Him  as  its  object, 
and  in  which  everything  depends  upon  the  fact  that  the 


2  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

believer  can  be  sure  of  his  Lord.  Christ  so  conceived 
is  a  person  of  transcendent  greatness,  but  He  is  a  real 
person,  a  historical  person,  and  the  representations  of 
His  greatness  are  true.  They  reproduce  the  reality 
which  He  is,  and  they  justify  that  attitude  of  the  soul  to 
Him  which  the  early  Christians  called  faith,  and  which 
was  the  spring  of  all  their  Christian  experiences.  This, 
we  repeat,  is  the  impression  which  the  New  Testament 
makes  on  the  ordinary  Christian  reader,  but  it  is  possible 
to  react  against  it.  In  point  of  fact,  the  reaction  has 
taken  place,  and  has  been  profound  and  far-reaching. 
Two  main  questions  have  been  raised  by  it  which  it  is 
the  object  of  the  present  work  to  examine.  The  first 
is,  How  far  is  the  description  just  given  of  the  New 
Testament  correct?  Is  it  the  case  that  the  Christian 
religious  life,  as  the  New  Testament  exhibits  it,  really 
puts  Jesus  into  the  place  indicated,  and  that  everything 
in  this  life,  and  everything  especially  in  the  relations  of 
God  and  man,  is  determined  by  Him?  In  other  words, 
is  it  the  case  that  from  the  very  beginning  Christianity 
has  existed  only  in  the  form  of  a  faith  which  has  Christ 
as  its  object,  and  not  at  all  in  the  form  of  a  faith  which 
has  had  Christ  simply  as  its  living  pattern?  The  sec- 
ond question  is  of  importance  to  those  who  accept  what 
seems  at  a  glance  the  only  possible  answer  to  the  first. 
It  is  this:  Can  the  Christian  religion,  as  the  New  Tes- 
tament exhibits  it,  justify  itself  by  appeal  to  Jesus? 
Granting  that  the  spiritual  phenomenon  is  what  it  is 
said  to  be,  are  the  underlying  historical  facts  sufficient 
to  sustain  it?  In  particular,  it  may  be  said,  is  the  mind 
of  Christians  about  Christ  supported  by  the  mind  of 
Christ  about  Himself?  Is  that  which  has  come  to  be 
known  in  the  world  as  Christian  faith — known,  let  us 
admit,  in  the  apostolic  age  and  ever  since — such  faith 
as  Jesus  lived  and  died  to  produce?     Did  He  take  for 


INTRODUCTION  3 

Himself  the  extraordinary  place  which  He  fills  in  the  mind 
and  the  world  even  of  primitive  Christians,  or  was  this 
greatness  thrust  upon  Him  without  His  knowledge,  against 
His  will,  and  in  inconsistency  with  His  true  place  and 
nature?  We  are  familiar  with  the  idea  that  we  can 
appeal  to  Christ  against  any  phenomenon  of  our  own  age 
which  claims  to  be  Christian;  is  it  not  conceivable  that 
we  may  have  to  appeal  to  Him  even  against  the  earliest 
forms  which  Christianity  assumed  ? 

No  one  who  is  familiar  with  the  currents  of  thought 
whether  within  or  without  the  Church  can  doubt  that 
these  questions  are  of  present  and  urgent  interest.  To 
some,  indeed,  it  may  seem  that  there  are  questions  more 
fundamental,  and  that  when  men  are  discussing  whether 
Jesus  ever  lived,  or  whether  we  know  anything  about  Him, 
it  is  trifling  to  ask  whether  the  apostolic  faith  in  Him 
is  justified  by  the  facts  of  His  history.  No  serious  person, 
however,  doubts  that  Jesus  existed,  and  the  second  of 
our  two  questions  has  been  stated  in  the  most  searching 
form  conceivable.  It  raises  in  all  its  dimensions  the 
problem  of  the  life  and  mind  of  Jesus,  and  in  answering 
it  we  shall  have  opportunity  to  examine  fully  the  sources 
on  which  our  knowledge  of  Jesus  rests.  For  those  who 
stand  outside  the  Christian  Church,  this  second  ques- 
tion is  naturally  of  greater  interest  than  the  other,  yet 
even  for  them  it  is  impossible  to  ignore  the  connexion 
of  the  two.  For  it  is  in  the  Church  and  through  its 
testimony  to  Jesus  that  whatever  knowledge  we  have  of 
Him,  even  in  the  purely  historical  sense,  has  been  pre- 
served. But  for  those  who  are  within  the  Church,  the 
first  question  also  has  an  interest  of  its  own.  To  ask 
whether  the  prima  facie  impression  which  the  New  Tes- 
tament makes  upon  us  is  verified  by  a  closer  examination 
— whether  the  interpretation  of  Christ  which  is  current 
in  the  Church  is  that  which  is  really  yielded  by  the  primi- 


4  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

tive  witnesses— is  to  ask  in  other  words  whether  the 
Church's  faith  to-day  is  continuous  with  that  of  apostolic 
times;  and  there  can  be  few  Christians  who  are  indifferent 
to  the  answer.  But  though  the  profession  of  indifference 
would  be  absurd,  it  is  not  absurd  to  aim  at  sincerity  and 
truth.  No  one  can  be  more  anxious  to  know  the  truth 
than  the  man  to  whom  it  means  a  great  deal  that  the 
truth  should  be  thus  or  thus.  It  we  could  imagine  a  per- 
son to  whom  it  was  a  matter  of  indifference  whether  the 
Christian  Church  of  to-day  understood  rightly  or  wrongly 
what  the  New  Testament  means  by  Christian  faith,  or 
who  did  not  care  in  the  least  whether  the  historical  facts 
about  Jesus  justified  that  faith  or  not,  we  should  have 
imagined  a  person  not  ideally  competent  but  absolutely 
incompetent  to  deal  with  either  the  one  question  or  the 
other.  The  writer  does  not  wish  to  disguise  the  fact  that 
he  is  vitally  interested  in  both,  for  he  is  convinced  that 
on  no  other  condition  is  there  any  likelihood  of  the  true 
answer  being  found.  But  he  disclaims  at  the  same  time 
any  '  apologetic'  intention.  There  is  no  policy  in  what  he 
lias  written,  either  in  its  manner  or  its  substance.  No- 
thing, so  far  as  he  is  conscious,  is  set  down  for  any  other 
reason  than  that  he  believes  it  to  be  the  truth,  and  nothing 
is  to  be  discounted  or  allowed  for  as  though  he  were 
mediating  or  negotiating  between  the  progressive  and 
the  stationary  elements  in  a  Christian  society,  and  would 
have  said  more  or  less  if  he  had  been  free  to  speak  with- 
out reserve.  To  the  best  of  his  knowledge  he  speaks 
without  reserve,  and  has  neither  more  nor  less  to  say. 
This  does  not  exclude  the  intention  and  the  hope  to  say 
what  may  be  of  service  to  Christian  faith  and  to  the 
Christian  Church;  all  it  excludes  is  the  idea  that  Chris- 
tian faith  or  the  Christian  Church  can  be  served  by  any- 
thing else  than  simple  truth. 
The  two  questions  with  which  we  have   to   deal   are 


INTRODUCTION  5 

in  one  important  respect  of  very  different  character.  The 
first  is  quite  simple:  Is  the  conception  of  the  Christian 
religion  which  prevails  and  has  always  prevailed  in  the 
Church  borne  out  by  the  New  Testament?  As  we  know 
it,  and  as  it  has  been  known  in  history,  the  Christian  life 
is  the  life  of  faith  in  Jesus  Christ:  is  this  what  it  was  in 
primitive  times?  Does  the  New  Testament  throughout 
give  that  solitary  and  all-determining  place  to  Jesus 
which  He  holds  in  the  later  Christian  religion?  This 
is  a  simple  question,  and  no  difficulty  can  be  raised  about 
the  proper  method  of  answering  it.  All  we  have  to  do 
is  to  go  to  the  New  Testament  and  scrutinise  its  evidence. 
The  laws  of  interpretation  are  agreed  upon  among  in- 
telligent people,  and  no  difficulty  about  '  presuppositions ' 
is  raised.  But  the  second  question  is  of  a  different  kind. 
It  has  to  do  with  what  is  historically  known  of  Jesus, 
and  here  the  difficulty  about  'presuppositions'  becomes 
acute.  It  is  possible  to  argue  that  much  of  what  the 
New  Testament  records  concerning  Jesus  cannot  be  his- 
torically known — that  it  transcends  the  conception  of 
what  is  historical,  and  must  either  be  known  on  other 
terms  than  history,  or  dismissed  from  the  region  of 
knowledge  altogether.  It  is  not  necessary  at  this  stage 
to  raise  the  abstract  problem;  when  we  come  to  the  sec- 
ond question  it  will  be  considered  as  far  as  the  case  requires. 
Here  the  writer  would  only  express  his  distrust  of  a 
priori  determinations  of  what  is  possible  either  in  the 
natural  or  the  historical  sphere.  There  is  only  one  uni- 
verse: nature  is  not  the  whole  of  it,  neither  is  history; 
and  neither  nature  nor  history  is  a  whole  apart  from  it. 
Nature  and  history  do  not  exist  in  isolation;  they  are 
caught  up  into  a  moral  and  spiritual  system  with  which 
they  are  throughout  in  vital  relations.  It  is  not  for  any- 
one to  say  offhand  and  a  priori  what  is  or  is  not  naturally 
or  historicallv  conceivable  in  such  a  system.     Its  possi- 


6  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

bilities,  in  all  likelihood,  rather  transcend  than  fall  short 
of  our  anticipations;  we  need  not  be  too  much  surprised 
if  experience  calls  rather  for  elasticity  than  for  rigidity 
of  mind.  If  anything  is  certain,  it  is  that  the  world  is 
not  made  to  the  measure  of  any  science  or  philosophy, 
but  on  a  scale  which  perpetually  summons  philosophy 
and  science  to  construct  themselves  anew;  and  it  is  with 
the  undogmatic  temper  which  recognises  this  that  the 
problems  indicated  above  are  approached  in  this  book. 


BOOK  I 

CHRISTIANITY  AS  IT  IS  EXHIBITED  IN 
THE  NEW  TESTAMENT 


BOOK  I 

CHRISTIANITY  AS  IT  IS  EXHIBITED  IN 
THE  NEW  TESTAMENT 

INTRODUCTION 

It  has  been  said  above  that  in  the  New  Testament  we 
are  confronted  with  a  religious  life  in  which  everything 
is  determined  by  Christ,  and  the  question  we  have  to 
consider  is  whether  this  is  really  so.  Is  there  such  a 
thing  as  New  Testament  Christianity,  a  spiritual  phenom- 
enon with  a  unity  of  its  own,  and  is  this  unity  consti- 
tuted by  the  common  attitude  of  all  Christian  souls  to 
Christ? 

The  instinctive  answer  of  those  who  have  been  brought 
up  in  the  Christian  faith  is  in  the  affirmative.  They 
cannot  doubt  that  New  Testament  Christianity  is  one 
consistent  thing.  They  are  equally  at  home  in  all  parts 
of  the  New  Testament;  they  recognise  throughout  in  it 
the  common  faith,  the  faith  which  gives  Jesus  the  name 
which  is  above  every  name.  This  instinctive  assurance 
of  the  unity  of  the  New  Testament  is  not  disturbed  by 
even  the  keenest  sense  of  the  differences  which  persist 
along  with  it.  Criticism  is  a  science  of  discrimination, 
and  the  critical  study  of  the  New  Testament  has  had  the 
greater  part  of  its  work  to  do  in  bringing  into  relief  the 
distinctions  in  what  was  once  supposed  to  be  a  uniform 
and  dead  level.  The  science  of  New  Testament  theology, 
if  it  is  a  science,  has  defined  the  various  types  of  primitive 
teaching  by  contrast  to  one  another;  it  has  taught  us 

9 


io  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

to  distinguish  Peter  and  Paul,  James  and  John,  instead 
of  losing  them  in  the  vague  conception  of  'apostolic/ 
Even  the  reader  who  is  not  a  professional  student  is 
aware  of  the  distinctions,  though  he  has  no  temptation 
to  press  them.  He  is  conscious  that  the  dialectical  dis- 
cussions of  Galatians  and  Romans  are  profoundly  unlike 
the  intuitive  and  contemplative  epistles  of  John.  When 
he  reads  the  first  verses  of  Hebrews  or  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  he  becomes  aware  that  he  has  entered  a  new 
intellectual  atmosphere;  this  is  not  the  air  which  he 
breathes  in  Matthew,  Mark,  or  Luke.  That  new  method 
of  study  known  to  Germans  as  the  *  religionsgeschicht- 
liche  Methode,'  which  regards  the  Christianity  of  the 
New  Testament  as  a  supreme  example  of  religious  syn- 
cretism, and  by  the  help  of  the  science  of  comparative 
religion  traces  all  the  elements  of  it  to  their  independent 
sources,  of  course  still  further  emphasises  the  differences. 
To  it,  Christianity  is  a  stream  which  has  its  proximate 
source  in  Jesus;  but  as  the  stream  flows  out  into  the 
world  tributaries  pour  into  it  from  every  side,  swelling, 
colouring,  sometimes  poisoning  its  waters.  This  process 
does  not  begin,  as  we  have  perhaps  been  taught  to  be- 
lieve, when  the  New  Testament  closes,  so  that  we  have 
the  New  Testament  as  a  standard  for  the  perpetual 
Ij  restoration  ot  the  true  faith:  it  "begins  at  the  very  begin- 
6  %  mng7  Tne  iNew  Testament  itself  is  the  earliest  witness 
to  it,  and  it  is  the  New  Testament  itself  which  we  must 
purge  if  we  would  get  Christianity  pure  and  undented. 
All  the  sacramentarianism,  for  example,  which  we  find 
in  Paul's  first  epistle  to  the  Corinthians;  all  the  nascent 
Catholicism  of  Acts  and  the  Pastoral  Epistles;  all  the 
religious  materialism  which  in  one  form  or  another  con- 
nects itself  with  the  Church  and  its  ministry,  has  to  be 
explained  and  discounted  on  these  lines.  It  cannot  be 
traced  to  Christ,  and  therefore  it  is  not  Christian;  it  can 


NEW  TESTAMENT  CHRISTIANITY         n 

be  traced  to  other  sources,  and  when  we  know  what  these 
are  we  understand  it,  and  can  rate  it  at  its  true  value. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  discuss  this  method  of  study  here. 
Its  right  is  unquestioned,  and,  though  like  all  new  things 
it  is  apt  to  go  to  some  heads  with  intoxicating  power,  it 
has  brought  light  to  a  few  dark  places  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  has  doubtless  more  to  bring.  The  point  at 
present  is  that  it  emphasises  certain  differences  which 
exist  in  the  New  Testament,  differences  which  (it  asserts) 
may  amount  to  a  direct  contradiction  of  essential  Chris- 
tian truth. 

No  one,  it  will  be  admitted,  can  deny  that  the  New 
Testament  has  variety  as  well  as  unity.  It  is  the  variety 
which  gives  interest  to  the  unity.  The  reality  and  power 
of  the  unity  are  in  exact  proportion  to  the  variety;  we 
feel  how  potent  the  unity  must  be  which  can  hold  all  this 
variety  together  in  the  energies  of  a  common  life.  The 
question  raised  by  every  demonstration  of  the  undeniable' 
differences  which  characterise  the  New  Testament  is, 
What  is  the  vital  force  which  triumphs  over  them  all? 
What  is  it  in  which  these  people,  differing  as  widely  as 
they  do,  are  vitally  and  fundamentally  at  one,  so  that 
through  all  their  differences  they  form  a  brotherhood,  and 
are  conscious  of  an  indissoluble  spiritual  bond?  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  that  which  unites  them  is  a  common 
relation  to  Christ — a  common  faith  in  Him  involving 
common  religious  convictions  about  Him.  Such  at  any 
rate  is  the  opinion  of  the  writer,  and  it  is  the  purpose 
of  the  following  pages  to  give  the  proof  of  it  in  detail. 
Everywhere  in  the  New  Testament,  it  will  be  shown,  we 
are  in  contact  with  a  religious  life  which  is  determined 
throughout  by  Christ.  Be  the  difference  between  the 
various  witnesses  what  they  will,  there  is  no  difference 
on  this  point.  In  the  relations  of  God  and  man,  every- 
thing turns  upon  Christ  and  upon  faith  in  Him.     There 


12  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

is  no  Christianity  known  to  the  New  Testament  except 
that  in  which  He  has  a  place  all  His  own,  a  place  of 
absolute  significance,  to  which  there  is  no  analogy  else- 
where. We  do  not  raise  here  the  question  whether  this 
is  right  or  wrong,  whether  it  agrees  or  does  not  agree 
with  the  mind  or  intention  of  Christ  Himself— this  is  re- 
served for  subsequent  treatment:  all  we  are  at  present 
concerned  with  is  the  fact.  It  is  not  assumed,  but  it  will 
appear  as  the  unquestionable  result  of  the  detailed  ex- 
amination, that  Christianity  never  existed  in  the  world 
as  a  religion  in  which  men  shared  the  faith  of  Jesus,  but 
was  from  the  very  beginning,  and  amid  all  undeniable 
diversities,  a  religion  in  which  Jesus  was  the  object  of 
faith.  To  all  believers  Jesus  belonged  to  the  divine  as 
truly  as  to  the  human  sphere.  In  the  practical  sense 
of  believing  in  Him  they  all  confessed  His  Godhead. 
This  is  the  fact  which  we  now  proceed  to  prove  and 
illustrate. 


CHRIST  IN  PRIMITIVE  CHRISTIAN  PREACHING 

Our  investigation  of  the  evidence  naturally  begins 
with  the  accounts  of  the  primitive  Christian  preaching  in 
Acts.  Fortunately  for  our  purpose  we  have  no  critical 
questions  to  encounter  here.  Even  those  who  hold  with 
Renan  that  the  early  pages  of  Acts  are  the  most  unhis- 
torical  in  the  New  Testament  make  an  exception  in 
favour  of  the  passages  with  which  we  are  concerned. 
'Almost  the  only  element,'  says  Schmiedel,1  'that  is  his- 
torically important  (in  the  early  chapters  of  Acts)  is  the 
Christology  of  the  speeches  of  Peter.  This,  however,  is 
important  in  the  highest  degree.  ...  It  is  hardly  possible 

1  Encyclopedia  Biblica,  42. 


PRIMITIVE   CHRISTIAN   PREACHING       13 

not  to  believe  that  this  Christology  of  the  speeches  of 
Peter  must  have  come  from  a  primitive  source.'  Perhaps 
what  it  is  most  important  to  notice  is  that  from  the  very 
beginning  there  really  is  a  Christology.  The  question 
which  Jesus  put  to  His  disciples  while  He  was  with  them, 
Whom  say  ye  that  I  am?  was  one  which  they  could  not 
help  putting  to  themselves.  If  we  hold  that  the  Son, 
properly  speaking,  has  no  place  in  the  gospel,  but  only 
the  Father,  then  the  question  is  a  misleading  one;  it  sets 
the  mind  off  spiritually  on  a  wrong  track.  This  seems, 
in  spite  of  ambiguities,  to  be  the  conviction  of  scholars 
like  Harnack,  who  thinks  that  Christology  is  a  mistake, 
and  would  lighten  the  distressed  ship  of  the  gospel  by 
throwing  it  overboard.1  He  goes  so  far  as  to  censure 
the  primitive  Church  for  turning  aside  from  its  proper 
duty — teaching  men  to  observe  all  things  that  Jesus  had 
commanded — to  the  apologetic  task  of  proving  that  Jesus 
was  the  Christ.2  Our  present  question,  we  repeat,  is  not 
whether  Peter  and  the  other  early  preachers  fulfilled  their 
calling  well  or  ill,  but  what  it  was  that  they  actually  did, 
and  of  this  there  can  be  no  doubt.  Their  own  relation 
to  Jesus,  as  we  see  it  in  Acts,  depends  finally  upon  His 
Resurrection  and  His  gift  of  the  Spirit;  and  though 
these  may  be  said  in  a  sense  to  transcend  history,  they 
do  not  lie  beyond  experience.  Peter  had  seen  the  Risen 
Jesus  and  received  the  Holy  Spirit:  in  virtue  of  these 
experiences,  Jesus  had  a  place  in  his  life  and  his  faith 
which  belonged  to  Him  alone.  He  was  both  Lord  and 
Christ,  and  there  was  nothing  in  the  religious  world  of 
the  apostle  that  was  not  henceforth  determined  by  Him. 
It  is  this  religious  significance  of  Jesus,  rather  than  the 
Christology  of  Peter,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term,  which 
it  is  our  purpose  to  exhibit. 

The  apostle  starts  in  his  preaching  from  the  historical 

xDas  Wesen  des  Christentums,  79  f.         2  Dogmengeschichte,  i.  57  f. 


i4  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

person  of  Jesus,  and  appeals  to  his  hearers  to  confirm 
what  he  says:  'Jesus  of  Nazareth,  a  man  approved  of 
God  unto  you  by  miracles  and  portents  and  signs  which 
God  wrought  through  Him,  as  you  yourselves  know' 
(Acts  222).  We  cannot  tell  what  precisely  was  the  sig- 
nificance to  Peter  of  the  wonderful  works  of  Jesus,  which 
are  here  assumed  to  be  matter  of  common  knowledge; 
the  expression  'a  man  approved  of  God'  is  somewhat 
indefinite,  and  need  not  mean  that  Jesus  was  demon- 
strated by  these  works  to  be  the  Messiah.  In  point  of 
fact,  the  characteristic  of  this  primitive  Christianity  is 
not  the  belief  that  Jesus  was  the  Christ,  but  the  belief 
that  He  is  the  Christ.  He  was  while  on  earth  what  all 
men  had  seen  and  known — a  man  approved  of  God  by 
His  might  in  word  and  deed;  He  is  now  what  the  preach- 
ing of  the  apostles  declares  Him  to  be — both  Lord  and 
Christ.  This  preaching  is  not,  indeed,  independent  of 
the  historical  life  of  Jesus.  When  a  man  was  chosen  to 
take  the  place  of  Judas,  and  to  be  associated  with  the 
eleven  as  a  witness  of  the  Resurrection,  he  was  chosen 
from  the  men  'who  have  companied  with  us  all  the  time 
that  the  Lord  Jesus  went  in  and  went  out  among  us,  begin- 
ning from  the  baptism  of  John  unto  the  day  that  He  was 
received  up  from  us'  (Acts  i 21  ')•  The  criticism  which 
would  have  us  believe  that  from  the  Resurrection  onward 
the  Jesus  of  history  was  practically  displaced  by  an  ideal 
Christ  of  faith  is  beside  the  mark.  The  Christ  of  faith 
was  the  Jesus  of  history,  and  no  one  was  regarded  as 
qualified  to  bear  witness  to  the  Christ  unless  he  had  had 
the  fullest  opportunity  of  knowing  Jesus.  Nevertheless, 
Jesus  is  demonstrated  to  be  the  Christ  and  is  preached 
in  that  character,  not  merely  or  even  mainly  on  the 
ground  of  what  He  had  said  and  done  on  earth,  but  on 
round  of  His  exaltation  to  God's  right  hand,  and 
ift  of  the  Holy  Spirit.     It  is  in  this  exaltation  and 


THE  CHRIST  OF  PETER  15 

in  this  wonderful  outpouring  of  divine  life  that  He  is 
seen  to  be  what  He  is,  and  takes  the  place  in  human 
souls  which  establishes  the  Christian  religion. 

The  Christ,  of  course,  is  a  Jewish  title,  and  it  is  easy 
to  say  impatient  or  petulant  things  about  it.  There  are 
those  who  profess  devotion  to  Jesus  and  tell  us  that  they 
do  not  care  whether  He  was  (or  is)  the  Christ  or  not; 
those  who  thank  God,  not  without  complacency,  that  to 
them  He  is  far  more  and  far  better  than  the  Christ; 
those  who  assure  us  that  Christianity  is  a  misnomer,  and 
that  our  religion  should  find  a  more  descriptive  name. 
Such  superior  persons  betray  a  lack  of  historical  discern- 
ment, and  it  is  wiser  on  the  whole  to  accept  the  world  as 
God  has  made  it  than  to  reconstruct  it  on  lines  of  our 
own.  The  conception  of  Jesus  as  the  Christ,  if  we 
interpret  it  by  the  teaching  of  Peter  in  the  early  chapters 
of  Acts,  is  not  one  which  it  is  easy  to  disparage.  It 
embodies  at  least  two  great  truths  about  Jesus  as  the 
apostle  regarded  Him.  The  first  is  that  Jesus  is  King. 
That  is  the  very  meaning  of  the  term.  The  Christ  is 
the  Lord's  Anointed,  and  the  throne  on  which  He  has 
been  set  in  His  exaltation  is  the  throne  of  God  Himself. 
It  is  a  translation  of  this  part  of  the  meaning  of  the  term 
into  less  technical  language  when  Peter  says  elsewhere: 
'Jesus  Christ,  He  is  Lord  of  all'  (Acts  10 36).  Simple  as 
it  is,  this  assertion  of  the  sovereignty  of  Jesus  covers  all 
that  is  characteristic  in  historical  Christianity.  If  it  dis- 
appeared, all  that  has  ever  been  known  to  history  as 
Christianity  would  disappear  along  with  it.  It  belonged 
to  Christian  faith  from  the  beginning  that  in  it  all  men 
should  stand  on  a  level  with  one  another,  but  all  should 
at  the  same  time  confront  Christ  and  do  homage  to  Him 
as  King.  The  second  truth  covered  and  guarded  by  the 
conception  of  Jesus  as  the  Christ  is  this:  that  He  is  the 
Person    through    whom    God's    Kingdom    comes,    and 


16  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

through  whom  all  God's  promises  are  fulfilled.  In  this 
sense  the  name  is  a  symbol  of  the  continuity  of  the  work 
of  God,  and  a  guarantee  of  its  accomplishment.  This  is 
the  historical  importance  of  it.  'To  Him  bear  all  the 
prophets  witness'  (Acts  io43).  All  prophecy  is  in  essence 
Messianic.  All  the  hopes  which  God  has  inspired  in  the 
hearts  of  men,  whether  by  articulate  voices  in  the  Old 
Testament,  or  by  the  providential  guidance  of  the  race, 
or  by  the  very  constitution  of  human  nature,  must  look 
to  Him  to  be  made  good.  To  borrow  the  language  of 
Paul,  'How  many  soever  are  the  promises  of  God,  in 
him  is  the  Yea'  (2  Cor.  1 20).  They  must  be  fulfilled  in 
Him,  or  not  at  all;  or  rather  we  should  say,  They  have 
been  fulfilled  in  Him,  and  in  no  other. 

The  exclusive  place  which  is  thus  given  to  Jesus  as 
the  Christ  is  insisted  upon  from  the  first.  Whether  we 
regard  Him  as  the  King  to  whom  all  must  do  homage, 
or  as  the  central  and  supreme  figure  in  history,  through 
whom  God's  final  purpose  is  to  be  achieved,  He  stands 
alone.  There  cannot  be  another,  who  shares  as  He 
does  the  throne  of  God;  there  cannot  be  another  to 
whom  all  the  prophets  bear  witness,  and  on  whom  all  the 
hopes  of  humanity  depend.  This  is  not  only  implied  in 
the  place  taken  by  Jesus  in  the  faith  of  the  apostle;  it 
has  come  to  clear  consciousness  in  the  apostle's  mind, 
and  is  explicitly  asserted  in  his  preaching.  'In  none 
other  is  there  salvation;  for  neither  is  there  any  other 
name  under  heaven,  that  is  given  among  men,  wherein 
we  must  be  saved'  (Acts  412).  If  we  can  rely  upon 
these  words  as  representing  the  mind  of  Peter — and  the 
writer  can  see  no  reason  to  question  them — it  is  clear 
tli at  Jesus  had  in  the  earliest  preaching  and  the  earliest 
faith  of  Christians  that  solitary  and  incommunicable 
place  which  the  Church  assigns  Him  still. 

It  is  worth  while,  however,  to  bring  out  more  distinctly 


THE  CHRISTIANITY  OF  PETER  17 

the  spiritual  contents  which  the  apostle  found  in  his 
Christ.  For  those  to  whom  he  preached  there  was  a 
hideous  contradiction  in  the  very  idea  that  one  should 
be  the  Christ  who  had  died  the  accursed  death  of  the 
Cross,  and  in  so  far  as  Peter's  sermons  are  apologetic 
they  deal  with  this  difficulty.  He  meets  it  in  two  ways. 
On  the  one  hand,  the  death  of  Jesus  was  divinely  neces- 
sary; He  was  delivered  up  by  the  determined  counsel 
and  foreknowledge  of  God.  The  evidence  of  this  divine 
necessity  was  no  doubt  found  in  the  Scriptures  (Acts 
223;  1  Cor.  15  3);  and  when  we  notice  that  in  describing 
the  death  of  Jesus  Peter  twice  uses  the  Deuteronomic 
phrase  '  hanged  upon  a  tree/  which  to  Paul  was  the 
symbol  of  Christ  made  a  curse  for  us  (Acts  5  30,  10 39; 
Deut.  21 23;  Gal.  3  13),  it  is  perhaps  not  going  too  far  to 
suggest  that  the  atoning  virtue  of  Christ's  death  was  an 
idea  as  well  as  a  power  in  the  primitive  Church.  But 
however  that  may  be,  it  is  certain  that  the  difficulties 
presented  by  His  death  to  faith  in  the  Messiahship  of 
Jesus  were  practically  annulled  by  His  Resurrection  and 
Exaltation.  It  was  this  which  made  Him  both  Lord 
and  Christ,  and  in  this  character  He  determined  for  the 
apostles  and  for  all  believers  their  whole  relation  to  God. 
To  Him  they  owed  already  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit; 
and  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  Peter  argues  elsewhere,  is 
the  sufficient  and  final  proof  that  men  are  right  with  God 
(Acts  11 15 17,  15  8).  To  His  coming  again,  or  rather  to 
His  coming  in  His  character  of  the  Christ,  they  looked 
for  times  of  refreshing,  nay  for  the  consummation  of 
human  history,  'the  times  of  the  restoration  of  all  things 
whereof  God  spake  by  the  mouth  of  His  holy  prophets 
which  have  been  from  of  old'  (Acts  3  21).  Much  stress 
has  been  laid  on  the  eschatological  aspects  of  the  primi- 
tive faith  in  Jesus  as  the  Christ,  and  they  are  not  to  be 
ignored;  but  neither  may  we  ignore  the  spiritual  char- 


t8  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

acter  of  the  salvation  which  men  owe  here  and  now  to 
the  Christ  who  is  to  come.  'Repent  and  be  baptized 
every  one  of  you  in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  for  remis- 
sion of  your  sins,  and  ye  shall  receive  the  gift  of  the  Holy 
Spirit'  (Acts  2  38).  Remission  of  sins  and  the  gift  of  the 
Holy  Spirit:  these  are  the  present  religious  experiences 
which  are  offered  to  men  through  faith  in  the  'eschato- 
logical'  Christ.  But  these  are  supremely  gifts  of  God, 
and  we  do  not  appreciate  truly  the  place  of  Christ  in  the 
apostle's  faith  until  we  see  that  where  salvation  is  con- 
cerned He  stands  upon  God's  side,  confronting  men. 
The  most  vivid  expression  is  given  to  this  in  Acts  2  33 : 
'Being  therefore  by  the  right  hand  of  God  exalted,  and 
having  received  of  the  Father  the  promise  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  He  hath  poured  forth  this  which  ye  see  and  hear.' 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  this  passage  Peter  looks 
upon  Jesus  in  His  exaltation  as  forming  with  God  His 
Father  one  Divine  causality  at  work  through  the  Spirit 
for  the  salvation  of  men.  His  humanity  is  not  ques- 
tioned or  curtailed;  it  has  been  spoken  of  without  pre- 
judice in  words  which  immediately  precede.  But  His 
relation  to  those  experiences  which  constitute  Christian 
life  is  that  of  being  their  Author,  the  Divine  Source 
from  which  they  come;  he  is  not  to  Christian  faith  a 
Christian,  but  all  Christians  owe  their  being,  as  such,  to 
Him.  We  may  have  any  opinion  we  please  about  the 
tightness  or  the  wrongness  of  this,  but  it  is  not  possible 
to  question  the  fact.  We  may  argue  that  the  history  of 
the  Church,  like  that  of  the  human  race,  began  with  a 
fall  that  the  apostolic  belief  in  the  Resurrection  was  a 
mistake,  and  the  spiritual  experiences  which  accompa- 
ny <1  it  morbid  phenomena  to  be  referred  to  the  mental 
pathologist;  but  even  if  we  do,  we  must  admit  that  primi- 
tive Christianity  gave  Jesus  in  its  faith  the  extraordinary 
place  which  has  just  been  described.     He  is  the  Christ, 


THE   CHRISTIANITY   OF   PAUL  19 

the  Prince  of  Life,  Lord  of  all,  Judge  of  the  living  and 
the  dead,  at  God's  right  hand,  the  Giver  of  the  Spirit,  the 
fulfiller  of  all  the  promises  of  God.  He  is  not  the  first 
of  Christians  or  the  best  of  men,  but  something  abso- 
lutely different  from  this.  The  apostles  and  their  con- 
verts are  not  persons  who  share  the  faith  of  Jesus;  they 
are  persons  who  have  Jesus  as  the  object  of  their  faith, 
and  who  believe  in  God  through  Him. 


II 

CHRIST  IN  THE  FAITH  OF  PAUL 

There  is  an  idea  abroad  that  it  does  not  much  matter 
what  Paul  thought  of  Christ,  because  he  never  knew 
Him.  He  had  not  that  acquaintance  with  Him  during 
His  public  ministry  on  which,  as  we  have  seen,  stress 
was  laid  in  choosing  a  successor  to  Judas;  his  Christ, 
therefore,  cannot  but  have  been  an  ideal  and  theological 
rather  than  a  real  person.  He  has  even  been  charged, 
on  the  ground  of  a  difficult  expression  in  one  of  his 
epistles  (2  Cor.  5  16),  with  disparaging  the  kind  of  know- 
ledge to  which  importance  was  attached  in  Jerusalem, 
and  much  of  the  modern  criticism  of  his  theology  really 
assumes  with  the  Pharisaic  Christianity  of  Acts  that  he 
lacked  the  indispensable  qualifications  of  an  apostle. 
We  even  find  scholars  like  Gunkel  congratulating  them- 
selves on  this  ground  that  Paul's  influence  speedily 
waned.1  It  would  have  been  all  over  with  Christianity 
as  a  beneficent  historical  force  if  the  synoptic  gospels 
had  not  come  to  the  front  and  established  an  ascendancy 
in  the  Church  which  to  a  great  extent  neutralised  the 
Pauline  gospel.     If  the  question  before  us  were,  What 

1  Die  Wirkungen  des  heiligen  Geistes,  56. 


2o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

did  Paul  know  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth?  it  would  not  be 
difficult  to  reduce  these  assertions  to  their  true  propor- 
tions. Paul  did  not  live  in  a  vacuum;  he  lived  in  the 
primitive  Christian  society  in  which  all  that  was  known 
of  Jesus  was  current,  and  he  could  not,  by  the  most 
determined  and  obstinate  effort,  have  been  as  ignorant  of 
Jesus  as  he  is  sometimes  represented  to  be.  Among 
his  most  intimate  friends  and  fellow- workers,  at  different 
periods  of  his  life,  were  Mark  and  Luke,  the  authors  of 
our  second  and  third  gospels.  There  is  much  to  be  said 
for  the  idea  of  Mr.  Wright,1  that  they  worked  as  cate- 
chists  in  the  Pauline  Churches.  Is  it  conceivable  that 
the  apostle  did  not  know  what  they  taught,  and  did  not 
care?  If  this  reasoning  seems  too  a  priori,  or  too  much 
based  on  mere  probabilities,  to  carry  conviction,  it  only 
needs  such  a  searching  examination  of  the  apostle's 
writings  as  Feine's  Jesus  Christus  mid  Paulus  to  raise  it 
beyond  doubt.  Paul  was  in  no  sense  ignorant  of  Jesus. 
If  our  synoptic  gospels  are  not  works  of  imagination,  but 
a  genuine  deposit  of  tradition— and  this  is  the  only  view 
which  is  represented  by  serious  scholars — then  the  sub- 
stance of  them  must  have  been  as  familiar  to  Paul  as  it 
is  to  us. 

In  view,  however,  of  the  question  which  we  are  dis- 
cussing, Paul's  knowledge  of  Jesus  is  beside  the  mark. 
Whether  he  knew  Jesus  or  not,  whether  his  influence  on 
Christianity  has  been  pernicious  or  not,  he  is  the  most 
important  figure  in  Christian  history.  He  did  more  than 
any  of  the  apostles  to  win  for  the  Christian  religion  its 
place  in  the  life  of  the  world,  and  he  has  done  more  than 
any  of  them  in  always  winning  that  place  again  when 
it  seemed  in  danger  of  being  lost.  Evangelical  revival, 
in  personalities  so  powerful  as  Luther,  Wesley,  and 
Chalmers,  has  always  been  kindled  afresh  at  the  flame 

1  The  Composition  oj  the  Four  Gospels,  cc.  i.  and  ii. 


THE   CHRISTIANITY  OF  PAUL  21 

which  burns  inextinguishable  in  his  testimony  to  Christ. 
Hence,  quite  apart  from  any  question  as  to  its  justi- 
fication or  otherwise,  nothing  can  be  of  more  consequence 
than  to  ascertain  the  place  which  Christ  actually  filled 
in  the  faith  and  life  of  the  apostle.  Was  He  to  him  what 
we  have  seen  Him  to  be  in  the  faith  of  the  primitive 
Church  ? 

In  one  respect  at  least,  the  answer  cannot  be  doubt- 
ful. Paul's  Christian  life  began  with  the  appearance  to 
him  of  the  Risen  Saviour;  to  him,  as  to  Peter,  in  virtue 
of  His  exaltation  the  crucified  Jesus  was  both  Lord  and 
Christ.  With  the  splendour  of  that  appearance  present 
to  his  mind  Paul  calls  Jesus  the  Lord  of  glory  (1  Cor.  2  8) ; 
to  acknowledge  Him  in  this  character  is  to  make  the 
fundamental  Christian  confession  in  which  all  believers 
are  united  (1  Cor.  12 3;  Rom.  10 9).  It  is  often  said 
that  whatever  doctrinal  differences  may  be  detected  in 
the  New  Testament,  there  is  no  trace  of  Christological 
disputes.  It  is  not  quite  clear  that  this  is  the  case,  nor 
is  it  clear  that  it  must  be  so.  It  may  quite  fairly  be 
argued  from  such  a  passage  as  2  Cor.  1  19 — Now  God's 
Son — 'God's'  has  a  strong  emphasis — who  was  preached 
among  you  by  us,  I  mean  by  me  and  Silvanus  and  Timo- 
theus,  was  not  yea  and  nay — that  Paul  was  acquainted 
with  preachers  of  another  stamp  than  himself  and  his 
friends,  whose  Jesus  was  not  in  his  sense  God's  Son, 
but  perhaps  only  the  son  of  David.  There  is  something, 
too,  to  support  this  in  2  Cor.  1 1 4,  where  we  hear  of '  another 
Jesus,'  which  means  a  'different  spirit'  and  a  'different 
gospel.'  But,  however  this  may  be,  it  is  certain  that  the 
Risen  Jesus  fills  the  same  place  in  the  religion  of  Paul 
as  in  that  of  Peter.  To  both  apostles  He  is  Lord  and 
Christ.  To  both  He  is  exalted  at  God's  right  hand.  In 
the  faith  of  both  He  comes  again  to  judge  the  living  and 
the  dead.     It  is  of  Him  that  both  say,  with  that  great  and 


22  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

terrible  day  in  view,  '  Whosoever  shall  call  upon  the  name 
of  the  Lord  shall  be  saved'  (Acts  221;  Rom.  10  13).  If 
Peter  cries  to  the  Jews, '  There  is  not  salvation  in  any  other' 
(Acts  412),  Paul  writes  to  the  Gentiles,  'Other  founda- 
tion can  no  man  lay  than  that  is  laid,  which  is  Jesus  Christ' 
(1  Cor.  3  u).  The  absolute  religious  significance  of  Jesus, 
in  all  the  relations  of  God  and  man,  is  the  specific  quality 
of  the  new  faith  as  it  appears  in  both. 

The  place  Paul  has  filled  in  the  history  of  Christianity 
justifies  us  in  showing  with  some  detail  how  this  absolute 
religious  significance  of  Christ  pervades  and  dominates 
his  spiritual  life. 

Sometimes  it  comes  out  quite  casually,  where,  as  we 
might  say,  he  is  not  specially  thinking  about  it.  Thus 
in  the  salutations  of  his  epistles  he  habitually  wishes  the 
churches  grace  and  peace  from  God  our  Father  and  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  (Rom.  1  7;  1  Cor.  1 3;  2  Cor.  1 2;  Gal. 
i3,  etc.),  or  he  writes  to  them  as  societies  which  have 
their  being  in  God  the  Father  and  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
(1  Thess.  1  *;  2  Thess.  1 *).  This  is  exactly  parallel, 
in  the  place  it  gives  to  Jesus,  to  what  we  have  already 
seen  in  Acts  2.  Paul  would  not  think  any  more  than 
Peter  of  questioning  the  real  and  complete  humanity  of 
Jesus;  but  when  he  thinks  of  the  grace  and  peace  by 
which  the  Church  lives,  he  does  not  think  of  Jesus  as 
sharing  in  them  with  himself;  he  sets  Him  instinctively 
and  spontaneously  on  the  side  of  God  from  whom  they 
come.  If  the  Father  is  the  source,  Christ  is  the  channel 
of  these  blessings;  the  Father  and  the  Son  together  con- 
front men  as  the  divine  power  to  which  salvation  is  due. 

Sometimes,  again,  the  place  Christ  has  in  Paul's  faith 
comes  out  in  a  single  word;  for  example,  when  in  1  Cor. 
15  M  lie  calls  Him  without  qualification  'the  Son.'  This 
passage,  in  which  the  apostle  tells  us  that  when  the  end 
comes  the  Son  Himself  shall  be  subject  to  Him  who  put 


THE  CHRISTIANITY  OF  PAUL  23 

all  things  under  Him,  that  God  may  be  all  in  all,  is  some- 
times cited  to  justify  minimising  or  disparaging  views 
of  Christ's  place,  but  nothing  could  be  more  inept.  The 
person  here  spoken  of  has  already  brought  to  nought 
'every  principality,  and  every  authority  and  power.'  He 
has  put  all  His  enemies  under  His  feet.  He  has  destroyed 
death.  He  has  fulfilled  all  the  purposes  and  promises 
of  God.  All  that  God  has  designed  to  do  for  men,  He 
has  now  done  through  Him  as  Messianic  King,  and  the 
ends  of  His  Kingship  being  achieved  Christ  hands  over 
the  kingdom  to  His  Father.  But  that  does  not  touch 
the  fact  that  these  ends  have  been  achieved  through  Him, 
and  that  they  can  be  achieved  through  no  other.  What 
other  could  do  what  Christ  is  here  represented  as  having 
done  for  men?  What  other  could  hold  the  place  in  the 
apostle's  mind  which  He  holds?  What  other  could  be 
called  simpliciter  'the  Son'?  The  handing  over  of  the 
kingdom  to  the  Father  does  not  compromise  the  solitary 
greatness  which  is  conveyed  by  this  name;  it  leaves  the 
Son  in  that  incomparable  place  which  is  suggested  by  His 
own  solemn  words  in  Mark  13  32. 

The  religious  attitude  of  Paul  to  Christ  is  made  plainer 
still  by  the  passages  in  which  he  involuntarily  or  delib- 
erately contrasts  Him  with  men.  Thus  in  defending 
his  apostleship  to  the  Galatians  he  speaks  of  himself 
as  an  apostle  who  did  not  owe  his  calling  to  a  human 
source  nor  get  it  through  a  human  channel,  but  through 
Jesus  Christ  and  God  the  Father  who  raised  Him  from 
the  dead  (Gal.  1 1).  The  last  words  show  that  when  he 
mentions  Jesus  Christ  it  is  the  Risen  Lord  he  has  in  view, 
and  nothing  could  bring  out  more  clearly  than  the  broad 
contrast  of  this  sentence  how  instinctively  and  decisively 
Paul  sets  the  Risen  Christ  side  by  side  with  God  the  Father 
in  contrast  to  all  that  is  human.  That  is  his  place  in  the 
Christian  religion.     He  is  not  in  any  sense  one  of  those 


24  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

who  have  been  or  are  being  saved;  he  is  included  in  the 
divine  causality  by  which  salvation  is  accomplished.  It 
would  never  have  occurred  to  Paul  to  deny  that  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  who  was  crucified  at  Jerusalem  was  true  man, 
but  however  he  may  have  reconciled  this  with  his  faith 
as  a  Christian,  that  faith  indubitably  put  Jesus  into  the 
sphere  of  the  divine.  The  apostolic  calling  which  came  to 
Paul  through  him  was  not  a  calling  of  man,  but  of  God, 
and  the  same  holds  of  all  the  experiences  which  the  apos- 
tle owes  to  Christ.  Another  illustration  of  this  may  be 
given.  'What  is  Apollos?  What  is  Paul?'  the  apostle 
asks,  rebuking  the  party  spirit  at  Corinth.  'Ministers 
through  whom  ye  believed,  and  each  as  the  Lord  gave 
to  him.'  The  Lord  here,  as  always  in  Paul,  is  Christ, 
and  is  directly  contrasted  with  His  most  distinguished 
servants.  It  is  in  the  same  spirit  that  the  apostle  ex- 
claims, 'Was  Paul  crucified  for  you?  or  were  you  bap- 
tized in  the  name  of  Paul?'  The  idea  which  he  here 
takes  for  granted  is  that  the  name  of  Jesus  is  an  incom- 
parable, incommensurable  name.  We  can  compare  Paul 
and  Apollos  if  we  please;  we  can  say  that  one  planted  and 
the  other  watered,  though  the  apostle  does  not  look 
on  the  making  of  such  comparisons  as  a  very  profitable 
employment.  But  we  must  not  compare  Paul  and  Christ. 
They  are  not,  like  Paul  and  Apollos,  members  of  one 
class  by  the  ideal  of  which  they  can  be  judged.  They 
are  not  teachers  of  religion,  whether  in  rivalry  or  in  part- 
nership, who  can  equally  be  criticised  through  the  idea 
of  what  religious  teaching  ought  to  be.  This  view  is 
quite  common  in  modern  times  even  among  men  who 
profess  to  preach  the  Christian  religion,  but  it  is  not  the 
view  of  Paul.  The  very  idea  of  it  shocked  him.  His 
own  relation  to  the  Church,  or  that  of  Apollos,  was  in 
no  way  analogous  to  that  of  Christ.  No  doubt  if  he 
and  Apollos  had  refused  or  renounced  Christianity,  the 


THE  CHRISTIANITY   OF  PAUL  25 

Church  would  have  missed  them,  but  their  places  could 
have  been  supplied.  The  Church  would  have  been 
there  though  they  had  been  wanting,  and  the  Lord  who 
Himself  gives  the  apostles  and  prophets  and  evangelists 
would  have  raised  up  others  for  His  work.  But  without 
Christ  there  would  be  no  Church,  and  no  ministry  at  all; 
everything  that  we  call  Christian  is  absolutely  dependent 
on  Him.  From  this  side,  again,  therefore,  we  see  the 
unique  place  which  Christ  filled  in  the  faith  of  Paul. 

This  exclusive  and  divine  significance  of  Christ  is  even 
more  conspicuous  when  we  look  at  the  two  great  religious 
controversies  which  engaged  the  apostle's  mind  in  his 
earlier  and  later  years,  and  brought  his  faith  to  articulate 
and  conscious  expression.  The  first  is  that  which  has  left 
its  most  vivid  record  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians,  and 
which  is  described  from  a  greater  distance  and  with  less 
passion,  perhaps  less  appreciation  of  all  that  was  involved, 
in  the  fifteenth  chapter  of  Acts.  What  was  really  at 
stake  was  the  essence  of  Christianity.  All  who  were 
Christians,  Paul  and  his  Pharisaic  opponents  alike,  in 
some  sense  believed  in  Christ;  the  question  was  whether 
for  perfect  Christianity  anything  else  was  required.  The 
Pharisaic  Christians  said  Yes.  The  Gentile  faith  in 
Christ  was  very  well  as  a  beginning;  but  if  these  foreign 
believers  were  to  be  completely  Christian  and  to  inherit 
the  blessings  of  the  Messianic  kingdom  on  the  same  foot- 
ing with  them,  their  faith  in  Christ  must  be  supplemented 
by  circumcision  and  the  keeping  of  the  Mosaic  law.  Paul 
said  No.  Christ  is  the  whole  of  Christianity— Christ 
crucified  and  risen.  He  is  the  whole  of  it  on  the  external 
side,  regarded  as  the  revelation  and  action  of  God  for  the 
salvation  of  sinful  men;  and  faith  in  Christ — that  aban- 
donment of  the  soul  to  Him  in  which  Paul  as  a  Christian 
lived  and  moved  and  had  his  being — is  the  whole  of  it  on 
the  internal  side.     Anything  that  compromises  this  simple 


26  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

and  absolute  truth,  anything  that  proposes  to  supplement 
Christ  on  the  one  side  or  faith  on  the  other,  is  treason  to 
the  gospel.  It  strikes  at  the  root  of  Christianity,  at  the 
absolute  sufficiency  of  grace  in  God  and  of  faith  in  man 
to  solve  the  problem  of  salvation;  it  denies  the  glory  of 
Christ  and  destroys  the  hope  of  sinners.  This  is  how 
Paul  conceived  it,  and  it  is  this,  and  not  any  personal 
intolerance  of  opposition,  which  prompts  the  solemn 
vehemence  of  Gal.  i  8:  Though  we,  or  an  angel  from 
heaven,  should  preach  unto  you  any  gospel  other  than 
that  which  we  preached  unto  you,  let  him  be  anathema. 
The  interest  of  the  words  for  us  is  the  force  with  which 
they  bring  out  the  absolute  and  unshared  place  which 
Christ  filled  in  the  religion  of  Paul.  His  faith  in  Christ 
was  such  that  it  admitted  of  no  other  object;  Christ  com- 
pletely filled  his  religious  horizon;  his  whole  being,  as 
a  spiritual  man  with  a  life  toward  God,  depended  upon 
and  was  determined  by  Christ  alone.  And  for  this  view, 
which  he  was  perhaps  the  first  to  think  out  in  clearness 
and  simplicity,  Paul  was  able  to  command  the  assent  of 
the  apostles  who  had  been  admitted  to  the  intimacy 
of  Jesus.  James,  Cephas,  and  John  gave  him  and  his 
fellow-worker  Barnabas  the  right  hand  of  fellowship. 

It  is  essentially  the  same  religious  question  which  is 
raised  in  another  form  in  the  second  great  controversy 
of  the  apostle's  life— that  to  which  we  are  introduced  in 
the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians.  The  law  appears  here 
also,  but  the  real  danger  now  is  not  that  of  supplement- 
ing Christ  by  ritual  observances,  but  that  of  dispensing 
with  Him,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  in  favour  of  angelic 
mediators.  Paul's  attitude  in  this  new  situation  is 
precisely  what  it  was  in  Galatians.  Christ  is  all,  is  the 
burden  of  his  argument.  We  do  not  need  to  look  any- 
where but  to  Him  for  that  knowledge  and  presence  of 
God  on  which  salvation  depends;  in  Him  are  all  the 


THE  CHRISTIANITY  OF  PAUL  27 

treasures  of  wisdom  and  knowledge  hidden  away;  in  Him 
dwells  all  the  fulness  of  the  Godhead  bodily.  Once 
more  it  may  be  repeated  that  we  are  not  dealing  with 
the  truth  or  falsehood  of  these  views,  with  the  possi- 
bility or  impossibility  of  justifying  them,  but  only  with 
the  fact.  This  is  how  Paul  unquestionably  thought  of 
Jesus:  this  is  indubitably  the  place  which  Jesus  filled  in 
his  religious  life.  It  is  not  putting  it  too  strongly  to  say 
that  He  had  for  Paul  the  religious  value  of  God.  To 
suppose  that  Paul  could  have  classified  Him,  and  put 
Him  in  a  series  along  with  other  great  men  who  have 
contributed  to  the  spiritual  elevation  of  the  race,  is  to 
deride  his  sincerity  and  passion.  In  the  religion  of  the 
apostle,  Jesus  held  a  place  which  no  human  being  could 
share.  He  is  the  Alpha  and  the  Omega,  the  beginning 
and  the  end,  the  First  and  the  Last. 

Although  we  are  not  concerned  with  the  Christology 
of  the  apostle,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term,  but  only 
with  the  significance  which  Christ  had  for  his  faith,  it 
will  exhibit  that  significance  more  clearly,  and  so  con- 
tribute to  our  purpose,  if  we  look  at  the  principal  ways 
in  which  he  seems  to  have  conceived  Christ.  In  a  sense, 
this  is  entering  the  region  of  doctrine  rather  than  of  faith, 
but  it  is  not  with  a  doctrinal  purpose;  what  we  wish  is 
to  see  through  the  doctrine  what  Christ  was  in  the  life 
of  Paul.  There  are  three  distinguishable  forms  in  which 
Christ  is  present  to  the  mind  of  the  apostle,  and  in  dif- 
ferent ways  the  same  religious  conclusion  can  be  drawn 
from  all. 

(1)  The  simplest  way  to  conceive  Christ  is  that  which 
regards  Him  as  an  individual  historical  person,  practi- 
cally contemporary  with  Paul  himself;  one  who  had 
lived  and  died  in  Palestine,  and  been  familiarly  known 
to  many  who  were  yet  alive.  No  doubt  Paul  often  thought 
of  Him  in  this  light;  it  would  be  impossible  for  any  one 


28  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

in  those  days  to  think  otherwise.  But  there  was  always 
one  immense  qualification  of  this  'purely  historical'  view. 
Paul  never  thought  of  Christ,  and  could  not  think  of  Him, 
except  as  risen  and  exalted.  Christianity  may  exist  with- 
out any  speculative  Christology,  but  it  never  has  existed 
and  never  can  exist  without  faith  in  a  living  Saviour.  It 
is  quite  possible  that  there  was  a  stage  in  his  Christian 
life  when  Paul  had  asked  no  theological  questions  about 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  whom  God  had  made  by  His  exalta- 
tion both  Lord  and  Christ.  It  is  quite  possible  that  he 
received  the  Holy  Spirit  and  the  apostolic  commission 
and  preached  the  gospel  with  divine  power  and  blessing, 
before  he  had  asked  any  question  about  the  nature  of 
Christ,  or  His  original  relation  to  God  or  to  the  human 
race,  or  about  the  mode  in  which  the  historical  personality 
originated  in  which  he  now  recognized  the  only  Lord  and 
Saviour.  It  is  not  his  speculative  Christology,  if  we  are 
to  call  it  such,  which  secures  for  Christ  His  place  in  Paul's 
religious  life;  Christ  holds  that  place  by  another  title,  be- 
fore the  speculative  Christology  appears.  The  importance 
of  that  Christology  lies  not  so  immediately  in  itself  as  in 
the  testimony  it  bears  to  the  immense  stimulation  of 
intelligence  by  the  new  faith.  If  we  look,  for  example, 
at  the  Epistles  to  the  Thessalonians,  we  find  no  trace  of 
Christology  in  the  technical  sense.  There  is  an  entire 
absence  of  speculative  construction  or  interpretation  of 
the  Person  of  Christ.  The  Lord  Jesus  Christ  is  simply 
the  historical  person,  known  to  Paul's  contemporaries,  who 
had  been  put  to  death  by  the  Jews,  and  whom  God  had 
raised  from  the  dead.  There  is  not  a  word  about  pre- 
exist ence,  or  the  incarnation,  or  an  eternal  relation  to 
to  God,  or  a  universal  relation  to  men.  Yet  the  person 
who  is  thus  simply  conceived  is  one  on  whom  Christians 
are  absolutely  dependent;  as  all  men  live  and  move  and 
have  their  being  in  God,  so  Christians  live  and  move 


THE  CHRISTIANITY  OF  PAUL  29 

and  have  their  being  in  Christ.  The  Church  of  the 
Thessalonians  is  a  church  in  God  the  Father  and  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ;  the  grace  and  peace  which  are  the  sum 
and  the  fruit  of  all  the  divine  blessings  it  enjoys  come 
to  it  from  God  the  Father  and  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
(1  Thess.  i1;  2  Thess.  ilf).  And  this  co-ordination 
of  Christ  with  the  Father,  this  elevation  into  the  sphere 
of  the  divine  in  which  Christ  and  the  Father  work 
harmoniously  the  salvation  of  men,  is  not  a  formal- 
ity of  salutation:  it  pervades  the  epistles  throughout. 
Every  function  of  the  Christian  life  is  determined  by 
it;  the  place  of  Christ  in  the  faith  and  life  of  Christians 
can  only  be  characterised  as  the  place  of  God,  not  of 
man.  St.  Paul  has  confidence  in  the  Lord  toward  the 
Thessalonians  (11.  3  4) ;  he  charges  and  entreats  them  in 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  (11.  3  12) ;  they  stand  in  the  Lord 
(1.  3  9) ;  he  gives  them  commandments  through  the  Lord 
Jesus  (1.  4 2) ;  church  rulers  are  those  who  are  over  them 
in  the  Lord  (1.  5  12) ;  the  Christian  rule  of  life  is  the  will  of 
God  in  Christ  Jesus  concerning  them  (1.  5  18) ;  the  Chris- 
tian departed  are  the  dead  in  Christ  (1.  4  16) ;  all  benediction 
is  summed  up  in  the  grace  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  (1.  5  28; 
11.  1 12,  3  18) ;  Jesus  and  the  Father  are  co-ordinated  as  the 
object  of  prayer  (1.  3  n) ,  and  prayer  is  directly  addressed 
to  the  Lord,  i.e.  Christ  (1.  3  12).  Our  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
through  whom  we  are  to  obtain  salvation  at  the  great 
day,  is  He  who  died  for  us,  that  whether  we  wake  or 
sleep  we  should  live  together  with  Him  (1.  5  10).  Itjs 
a^ihaugh^all  that  God  does  for  us  He  does  in  and  through 
Christ,  so  that  Christ  confronts  us  as  Saviour  in  divine 
jlQry^anoT~omnipotence.  WeTmay  trust  Him  as  God 
is  trusted,  live  in  Him  as  we  live  in  God,  and  appeal 
to  Him  to  save  us  as  only  God  can  save;  and  this  is  the 
essentially  Christian  relation  to  Him.  It  is  what  we 
found  before  in  the  primitive  preaching  of  Acts;   it  is 


3o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

what  we  find  in  Paul  when  his  theology  is  at  its  sim- 
plest, and  where  the  Christology  of  his  later  epistles  gives 
no  indication  of  its  presence. 

(2)  The  impression  made  upon  us  is  not  altered  when 
we  pass  to  that  more  developed  mode  of  conceiving 
Christ  which  is  characteristic  of  the  second  group  of  the 
apostle's  writings— the  controversial  epistles  of  the  third 
missionary  journey,  Corinthians,  Galatians,  and  Romans. 
Of  course  the  non-theological  way  of  presenting  Christ 
is  also  to  be  found  in  these,  as  in  all  Paul's  letters;  he 
could  not  but  think  of  Him  often  simply  as  the  historical 
person  whom  God  had  exalted  to  be  Lord  of  all.  But 
along  with  this  there  is  the  conception  of  Christ  as  a 
representative,  typical,  or  universal  person,  who  has 
for  a  new  Christian  humanity  the  same  kind  of  signifi- 
cance which  Adam  had  for  the  old.  Sometimes  it  is 
the  nature  of  this  Person  on  which  stress  is  laid;  he  is 
a  spiritual  man,  and  belongs  to  heaven,  as  opposed  to 
Adam,  who  was  a  natural  (psychical)  man,  and  of  the 
earth  earthen  (1  Cor.  15  45  *).  Sometimes  the  stress  is 
laid  not  on  his  nature,  but  on  his  action;  it  can  be  char- 
acterised by  the  one  word  obedience,  as  opposed  to  the 
disobedience  or  transgression  of  Adam;  and  like  the 
disobedience  of  the  first  man,  the  obedience  of  the  sec- 
ond is  of  universal  and  absolute  significance.  It  is  the 
salvation  of  the  world  (Rom.  512fL).  This  is  the  con- 
ception which  lends  itself  most  readily  to  what  are  usu- 
ally called  'mystical'  interpretations  of  Christ's  life  and 
work.  What  is  most  important  in  it  is  the  truth  which 
it  embodies  of  the  kinship  of  Christ  with  all  mankind, 
and  the  progressive  verification  of  that  truth  which  comes 
with  the  universal  preaching  of  the  gospel.  Paul  was 
convinced  of  the  representative  character  of  Christ  and 
of  all  His  acts;  the  death  that  He  died  for  all  has  some- 
how the  significance  that  the  death  of  all  would  itself 


THE   CHRISTIANITY  OF   PAUL  31 

have;  in  His  resurrection  we  see  the  first  fruits  of  a  new 
race  which  shall  wear  the  image  of  the  heavenly  man. 
It  may  indeed  be  said  that  any  man  is  kin  to  all  humanity, 
but  not  any  man  is  kin  in  such  a  sense  that  men  of  all 
races  can  find  their  centre  and  rally ing-point  in  Him. 
The  progress  of  Christian  missions  is  the  demonstration 
in  point  of  fact  that  Christ  is  the  second  Adam,  and  while 
His  true  humanity  is  asserted  in  this,  as  it  is  taken  for 
granted  everywhere  in  the  New  Testament,  it  leaves  Him 
still  in  a  place  which  is  His  alone.  When  Paul  thinks 
of  Christ  as  the  second  Adam,  he  does  not  reduce  Him 
to  the  level  of  common  humanity,  as  if  He  were  only  one 
more  in  the  mass;  on  the  contrary,  the  mass  is  conceived 
as  absorbed  and  summed  up  in  Him.  It  is  not  a  way  of 
denying,  it  is  one  way  more  of  asserting,  His  peculiar  place. 
(3)  The  same  may  be  said  with  even  greater  confi- 
dence of  Christ  as  He  is  presented  to  us  in  the  later 
Epistle  to  the  Colossians.1  We  have  here  to  do  not  with 
a  historical  individual  whom  God  has  exalted — not  with 
a  representative  or  universal  person  who  is  Man  rather 
than  one  particular  man — but  with  a  person  who  can 
only  be  characterised  as  eternal  and  divine.  When  Jesus 
is  represented  as  the  Christ,  it  is  as  though  He  were 
explained  by  reference  to  the  history  of  Israel;  as  the 
second  Adam,  he  can  be  understood  only  when  the 
reference  is  widened  to  take  in  the  constitution  and 
fortunes  of  the  whole  human  race;  but  in  the  later  mind 
of  Paul  there  is  something  more  profound  and  far-reach- 
ing than  either.  It  is  not  possible  to  do  justice  to  Jesus 
until  we  realise  that  in  Him  we  are  in  contact  with  the 
eternal  truth  and  being  of  God.  This  is  the  burden 
of  the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians.  What  comes  to  us  and 
acts  upon  us  in  Christ  is  nothing  less  than  the  eternal 
truth  of  God's  being  and  character;  it  is  not  adequately 

'See  also  iCor.8\ 


32  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

explained  by  thinking  of  Israel  or  by  thinking  of  humanity, 
but  only  by  thinking  of  God.  The  Jesus  Christ  of  the 
apostle's  faith  was  indeed  an  Israelite  after  the  flesh; 
He  was  true  and  complete  man,  born  of  a  woman;  but 
the  ultimate  truth  about  Him  is  that  in  Him  dwells  all 
the  fulness  of  the  Godhead  bodily,  and  that  we  are  com- 
plete in  Him.  There  is  not  anything  that  can  be  under- 
stood if  its  relation  to  Him  is  ignored.  All  that  we  call 
being,  and  all  that  we  call  redemption,  must  be  referred 
to  Him  alone;  this  is  the  divine  way  to  comprehend  it. 
In  Him  were  all  things  created,  and  it  pleased  the  Father 
through  Him  to  reconcile  all  things  to  Himself  (Col.  i 
and  2). 

These  are  overwhelming  ideas  when  we  think  of  Jesus 
of  Nazareth,  a  Galilean  carpenter,  who  had  not  where  to 
lay  His  head,  and  reflect  that  they  have  to  be  associated 
with  Him.  The  intellectual  daring  of  them  is  almost 
inconceivable;  imagination  fails  to  realise  the  pressure 
under  which  the  mind  must  have  been  working  when  it 
rose  to  the  height  of  such  assertions.  Yet  the  serious- 
ness and  passion  of  the  apostle  are  unquestionable,  and 
the  writer  can  only  express  his  conviction  that  the  at- 
tempts made  to  explain  what  may  be  called  the  Christ- 
ology  of  Colossians  by  reference  to  Philo  are  essentially 
beside  the  mark.  At  the  utmost,  they  help  us  to  under- 
stand a  casual  expression  here  and  there  in  Paul;  they 
contribute  nothing  to  the  substance  of  his  thought. 
Christ  was  not  a  lay  figure  that  Paul  could  drape  as 
he  chose  in  the  finery  of  Palestinian  apocalyptic  or  of 
Alexandrian  philosophy.  He  was  the  living  Lord  and 
Saviour,  and  if  we  can  be  sure  of  anything  it  is  that  in 
what  the  apostle  says  of  Him  there  is  nothing  merely 
formal,  nothing  which  has  the  character  of  literary  or 
speculative  borrowing,  but  that  everything  rests  on  ex- 
perience.    If  Christ  had  been  to  Paul  only  a  name  in 


THE  CHRISTIANITY  OF  PAUL  33 

a  book,  a  name  which  he  might  use  as  a  philosophic 
symbol  or  plaything,  we  might  set  a  higher  value  upon 
the  Philonic  or  other  explanations  which  are  sometimes 
offered  of  the  Christology  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Colos- 
sians;  but  when  we  consider  what  Christ  really  was  to 
the    apostle,    such    explanations    become    meaningless. 
Paul  was  not  a  philosopher  like  Philo,  baffled  by  the 
difficulty  of  connecting  the  spiritual  God  and  the  mate- 
rial universe,  and  finding  the  solution  of  his  ever-recur- 
ring problem  in  the  idea  of  the  Logos,  an  idea  which  in 
some  unexplained,  not  to  say  incomprehensible,  way  he 
was  led  to  identify  with  Christ.     The  relation  of  God  to 
the  world  had  no  more  difficulty  for  him  than  for  Amos 
or  Isaiah;  the  God  in  whom  he  believed  was  not  the 
philosophical  abstraction  of  Philo,  but  the  living  God  of 
the  Bible,  who  made  the  world  and  who  acted  in  it  as 
He  pleased.     Paul  did  not  transfer  to  Christ  the  attri- 
butes of  the  Logos,  he  did  not  make  Him  divine  or  half- 
divine,  that  he  might  provide  an  answer  to  speculative 
difficulties  about  the  relation  of  God  to  the  world  of 
matter.     The  process  in  his  mind  was  the  very  reverse. 
He  was  conscious  in  his  experience  as  a  Christian  that 
what  he  came  in  contact  with  in  Christ  was  nothing  less 
than  the  eternal  truth  and  love  of  God;  it  was  the  very 
reality  which  God  is,  the  revelation  of  His  eternal  being 
in  a  human  person,  the  fulness  of  the  Godhead  bodily 
(Col.  2  9).     It  does  not  matter  whether  'bodily'  means 
'incarnate  as  man,'  or  'in  organic  unity  and  complete- 
ness' as  opposed  to  partial  or  imperfect  revelation.     The 
point  is  that  Paul  was  conscious  of  meeting  God  in  Christ.  ^ 
Here,  he  felt,  he  touched  the  last  reality  in  the  universe, 
the  ens  realissimum,  the  ultimate  truth  through  which 
and  by  relation  to  which  all  things  must  be  denned    and 
understood.     Paul   does   not,   in   writing   to   the   Colos- 
sians,  invest  Christ  in  a  character  and  greatness  which 
3 


34  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

have  no  relation  to  His  true  nature,  merely  to  stop  a 
hole  in  his  philosophy.  On  the  contrary,  the  presence  of 
God  in  Christ— His  presence  in  the  eternal  truth  of  His 
being  and  character— is  for  Paul  the  primary  certainty; 
and  that  certainty  carries  with  it  for  him  the  requirement 
of  a  specifically  Christian  view  of  the  universe.  He 
would  not  be  true  to  Christ,  as  Christ  had  revealed 
Himself  to  him  in  experience,  unless  he  had  the  courage 
to  Christianise  all  his  thoughts  of  God,  and  the  world. 
And  this  is  what  he  is  doing  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Colos- 
sians.  He  is  not  directly  deifying  Christ,  he  is  Christi- 
anising the  universe.  He  is  not  exhibiting  Christ  as 
divine  or  quasi-divine,  by  investing  Him  in  the  waver- 
ing and  uncertain  glories  of  the  Alexandrian  Logos;  he 
is  casting  upon  all  creation  and  redemption  the  steadfast 
and  unwavering  light  of  that  divine  presence  of  which 
he  was  assured  in  Christ,  and  for  which  the  Alexandrians 
had  groped  in  vain.  There  is  nothing  in  Paul  more 
original,  nothing  in  which  his  mind  is  more  profoundly 
stimulated  and  his  faith  in  Christ  more  vitally  active, 
than  the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians;  and  no  greater  in- 
justice could  be  done  him  than  to  explain  the  signifi- 
cance which  he  here  assigns  to  Christ  by  pointing  to  the 
alien  and  formal  influence  of  a  feeble  dualistic  philosophy, 
or  to  strike  out  of  the  epistle,  as  some  would  do,  the 
very  sentences  which  are  the  key  to  the  whole.1  If  there 
is  anything  in  Paul's  writings  which  is  his  very  own,  born 
of  his  own  experience,  his  own  reflection,  the  necessities 
of  his  own  thought,  it  is  the  conception  of  Christ  as  an 
eternal  or  divine  person  characteristic  of  this  epistle. 

Here  again,  therefore,  we  find  our  previous  observa- 
tion of  the  New  Testament  confirmed.  Christ  has  a 
place  in  the  faith  of  Christians  which  is  without  parallel 
elsewhere.     But  while  we  must  not  fail  to  recognise  this, 

JSee  Von  Soden,  Hand  Commentar,  iii.  32  f. 


THE   CHRISTIANITY  OF  PAUL  35 

we  need  not  misunderstand  it.  It  is  misunderstood,  for 
example,  by  Wernle  when  he  says  that  the  consciousness 
of  God  must  have  been  weakened  in  Paul  before  he 
could  have  said  of  Christ  the  things  which  he  says  in  Co- 
lossians.1  Christ,  in  other  words,  practically  displaces  God 
in  this  epistle;  the  Jewish  sneer  is  almost  justified  which 
represents  Christians  as  teaching  that  there  is  no  God, 
but  that  Jesus  is  His  Son.  But  Christ  does  not  displace 
God;  it  is  in  Christ  alone  that  Paul  gets  that  assurance 
of  God,  and  of  his  eternal  truth  and  love,  in  which  he 
lives,  and  in  the  light  of  which  he  cannot  but  interpret 
all  things.  Nothing  that  he  says  justifies  the  Jewish 
sneer:  what  it  does  justify  is  the  truly  evangelical  re- 
mark of  Dr.  Chalmers — 'I  find  that  without  a  hold  of 
Christ  there  is  no  hold  of  God  at  all.'2  In  truth,  what 
we  have  in  Colossians  is  only  another  assertion  of  the 
absolute  significance  of  Christ  for  Christian  faith.  It  is 
consciously  pursued,  no  doubt,  in  its  consequences  further 
than  elsewhere,  but  it  is  the  same  thing.  A  person  of 
absolute  significance — an  eternal  person — a  person  to 
whom  in  one  way  or  another  the  idea  of  finality  attaches : 
all  these  are  indistinguishable.  If  we  say  that  Christ  is 
the  Alpha  and  the  Omega,  the  First  and  the  Last,  we 
represent  His  absolute  significance  in  one  way;  it  is 
eternity  for  the  imagination.  If  we  say  that  He  is  the 
final  Judge  of  all,  on  whose  decision  their  destiny  depends, 
we  represent  His  absolute  significance  in  another  way; 
it  is  eternity  for  the  conscience.  But  imagination  and 
conscience  have  not  rights  in  human  nature  which  can 
be  denied  to  the  intelligence  or  speculative  faculty;  and 
it  is  to  this  last,  and  not  merely  to  imagination  and  con- 
science,   that   Paul   interprets   in    Colossians   the    abso- 

lDie  Anfange  unserer  Religion,  205:  'Die  paulinische  Gnosis  geht 
hier  von  einem  sehr  lebendigen  Gefiihl  des  Christlichen  aus,  aber 
zugleich  von  einem  ganzlich  toten  Gottesbegriff.' 

2Hanna's  Life,  ii.  448. 


36  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

lute  significance  of  the  Lord.  It  is  not  our  business  at 
this  point  to  consider  whether  or  not  he  can  be  justified 
in  doing  so  by  appeal  to  Jesus  Himself,  but  it  seemed 
necessary  to  say  what  has  been  said  because  the  question 
of  justification  cannot  be  fairly  raised  until  there  is  agree- 
ment upon  what  he  has  actually  done. 

In  several  passages  of  Paul's  writings  there  is  a  con- 
ception of  Christ  which  to  most  readers  will  seem  akin 
to  that  which  we  have  been  discussing,  but  which  is  in 
truth  much  more  difficult  to  apprehend — the  conception 
of  Him  as  pre-existent.  The  one  difficulty  which  haunts 
theological  thinking  everywhere,  the  difficulty  or  rather 
the  impossibility  of  defining  the  relation  of  time  to  eter- 
nity, is  peculiarly  felt  here.  Is  an  eternal  person  rightly 
or  adequately  thought  of  as  a  person  existing  before 
all  things,  or  is  the  idea  of  pre-existence  an  imperfect 
means  of  representing  eternity  in  the  form  of  time — 
an  idea,  therefore,  which  is  bound  to  lead  to  inconsist- 
encies and  contradictions?  When  Paul  speaks  of  the 
pre-existence  of  Christ,  is  he  carrying  out  in  this  in- 
adequate form  his  own  conviction,  based  on  experience, 
that  Christ  is  a  person  in  whom  the  eternal  truth  of 
God  has  come  into  the  world,  and  who,  therefore,  be- 
longs to  God's  eternal  being?  Or  is  he  simply  applying 
to  Him  the  common  Jewish  belief  that  the  Messiah 
existed  with  God  before  He  appeared  among  men?  It 
is  not  easy  to  say:  even  if  we  admit  the  inadequacy  of 
an  idea  like  pre-existence  to  represent  the  eternal  sig- 
nificance of  Christ,  and  see  no  reason  to  doubt  that  cur- 
rent Jewish  beliefs  made  this  inadequate  representation 
easier  to  the  apostle,  we  must  admit  that  in  the  most 
characteristic  passages  in  which  he  uses  it  (2  Cor.  8  9; 
Phil.  2  5  ff-)  it  has  been  thoroughly  Christianised.  Judged 
by  the  Christian  knowledge  of  God's  revelation  in  Christ, 
the  act  by  which  the  eternal  person,  conceived  as  pre- 


THE   CHRISTIANITY  OF  PAUL  37 

existent,  enters  into  the  world  of  time,  is  a  characteris- 
tically divine  act.  It  is  one  in  which  the  eternal  truth 
of  the  divine  nature — that  God's  name  is  Redeemer 
from  of  old,  and  that  He  humbles  Himself  to  bear  us 
and  our  burdens  (Isa.  63  16;  Ps.  68 19) — is  conspicu- 
ously revealed.  In  itself,  the  idea  of  pre-existence  is 
harder  to  understand  and  to  appreciate  than  that  of 
eternal  reality  and  worth;  but  even  those  who  find  it, 
abstractly  considered,  least  congenial,  must  admit  that 
in  its  Pauline  applications  it  is  in  thorough  harmony 
with  the  mind  of  Christ.  Our  interest  in  it  here,  how- 
ever, need  not  carry  us  further;  its  application  to  Christ, 
and  to  Him  alone,  is  only  a  final  indication  of  the  in- 
comparable place  He  fills  in  the  faith  of  Paul. 

What  has  now  been  said  is  conclusive,  and  yet  it 
makes  practically  no  reference  to  the  one  signal  proof 
Paul's  writings  afford  of  the  unique  and  incommunicable 
place  Christ  held  in  his  faith.  That  proof  is  afforded  by 
what  the  apostle  teaches  of  the  meaning  and  power  of 
Christ's  death.  This  is  not  the  place  to  enter  into  an 
exposition  of  this:  it  is  sufficient  to  refer  to  the  fact. 
He  died  for  us,  that  whether  we  wake  or  sleep  we  might 
live  together  with  Him  (1  Thess.  5  10).  Paul  delivers  to 
men  first  of  all  that  Christ  died  for  our  sins,  according  to 
the  Scriptures;  this  is  the  divinely  laid  foundation  of 
the  gospel  (1  Cor.  15  3).  He  died  for  all,  so  then  all 
died — their  death  was  somehow  involved  and  compre- 
hended in  His;  Him,  who  knew  no  sin,  God  made  to 
be  sin  on  our  behalf,  that  we  might  be  made  the  right- 
eousness of  God  in  Him  (2  Cor.  5  14"21).  In  His  cruci- 
fixion He  became  a  curse  for  us  (Gal.  3  13).  God  set 
Him  forth  as  a  propitiation,  through  faith,  in  His  blood; 
when  we  were  enemies  we  were  reconciled  to  God  by 
the  death  of  His  Son  (Rom.  3  23,  5  10).  In  Him  we  have 
our  redemption,  through  His  blood,  even  the  forgiveness 


38  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

of  our  trespasses  (Eph.  i  7).  So  it  runs  through  the 
epistles  from  beginning  to  end.  There  is  no  other  person 
of  whom  such  things  can  be  said,  or  who  can  claim  even 
to  have  some  part  of  them  extended  to  him  when  they 
are  said  of  Christ.  They  are  all  for  Him  and  for  Him 
alone.  They  make  it  impossible  to  dispute  the  fact  that 
Christ  held  a  unique  place  in  Paul's  faith,  and  they  make 
us  feel  deeply  that  this  unique  place  was  held  hy  Christ 
in  virtue  of  something  which  made  Paul  infinitely  his 
debtor. 

What  has  now  been  said  hardly  needs  to  be  sum- 
marised. Whether  the  apostle  was  right  or  wrong; 
whether  he  was  impelled  by  his  experience  as  a  Chris- 
tian, or  prompted  by  reminiscences  of  pre-Christian, 
Messianic  theology,  and  extra-Christian  Alexandrian 
philosophy,  there  is  no  doubt  about  the  place  he  gave 
to  Christ.  Look  at  it  as  we  will,  it  was  a  place  which 
no  man  could  share.  Christ  determined  everything  in 
the  relations  of"  God  and  men;  but  this,  though  it  is 
central,  is  only  the  starting-point.  All  things  whatso- 
ever have  to  be  determined  by  relation  to  Him;  in  Him 
alone  is  the  key  to  their  meaning  to  be  found.  All  na- 
ture, all  history,  all  revelation  and  redemption,  all  that 
is  human  and  all  that  is  divine,  can  be  understood  only 
through  Him.  The  universe  has  to  be  reconstituted 
with  Him  as  its  centre,  the  principle  of  its  unity,  its  goal. 
To  understand  the  world  is  to  discover  that  it  is  a  Chris- 
tian world — that  spiritual  law,  the  very  law  in  which 
Christ  lived  and  died — pervades  the  constitution  of  nature 
and  the  history  of  man.  There  is  not  in  the  history 
of  the  human  mind  an  instance  of  intellectual  boldness 
to  compare  with  this,  and  it  is  the  supreme  daring  of  it 
which  convinces  us  that  it  is  the  native  birth  of  Paul's 
Christian  faith.  No  one  ever  soared  so  high  on  bor- 
rowed wings. 


THE  PLACE  OF  CHRIST  IN  HEBREWS    39 
III 

CHRIST   IN  THE   EPISTLE   TO   THE  HEBREWS 

When  we  pass  from  Paul,  it  is  open  to  us,  in  view  of 
the  chronological  and  other  uncertainties  regarding  the 
books  of  the  New  Testament,  to  take  them  in  almost 
any  order.  The  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  while  it  has 
affinities  with  almost  all  types  of  Christian  thought— 
with  the  synoptic  gospels  and  the  early  chapters  of  Acts, 
with  Paul  and  with  the  Judaism  of  Alexandria— never- 
theless stands  alone  in  the  New  Testament.  It  is  the 
most  solitary  of  the  primitive  Christian  books.  In  its 
presentation  of  Christ  we  might  almost  say  that  extremes 
meet.  On  the  one  hand,  it  is  the  most  humanitarian  of 
apostolic  writings.  It  speaks  with  a  kind  of  predilection 
of  Jesus,  not  the  Christ;  it  recalls  'the  days  of  His  flesh,' 
when,  with  strong  crying  and  tears,  He  offered  prayers 
and  supplications  to  Him  that  was  able  to  save  Him 
from  death,  and  was  heard  because  of  His  godly  fear; 
it  holds  Him  up  to  us  as  a  pattern  of  faith,  the  ideal 
subject  of  religion,  who  was  tempted  in  all  things  Hke 
as  we  are,  yet  without  sin;  who  passed  through  a  cur- 
riculum of  suffering  by  which  He  was  made  perfect  for  His 
calling,  and  who  learned  in  doing  so  what  it  is  to  obey; 
who  lived  the  life  of  faith  in  God  from  beginning  to  end, 
and  is  in  short  the  typical  believer.  All  this  touches 
the  heart  of  the  reader  as  it  no  doubt  moved  the  writer 
of  the  epistle,  but  it  does  not  disclose  to  us  the  full  sig- 
nificance of  Jesus  for  His  own  faith.  The  most  humani- 
tarian book  of  the  New  Testament  can  also  be  fairly 
described  as  the  most  theological.  Jesus  is  not  only 
the  pattern  of  true  piety,  but  everything  in  the  rela- 
tions of  God  and  men  is  determined  by  Him.     He  is 


4o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

the  mediator  of  a  new  covenant;  to  Him  we  owe  the 
bringing  in  of  a  better  hope  through  which  we  draw 
near  to  God.  It  is  the  virtue  of  his  priesthood  and 
sacrifice  which  consecrates  us  as  a  worshipping  people, 
and  by  annulling  sin  makes  it  possible  for  us  to  live  in 
fellowship  with  the  most  holy.  The  sentence  with  which 
the  epistle  opens  gathers  up  all  this  and  more  in 
one  sublime  period.  'God  having  of  old  time  spoken 
unto  the  fathers  in  the  prophets  by  divers  portions  and 
in  divers  manners,  hath  at  the  end  of  these  days  spoken 
unto  us  in  His  Son,  whom  He  appointed  heir  of  all  things, 
through  whom  also  He  made  the  worlds;  who  being 
the  effulgence  of  His  glory,  and  the  very  image  of  His 
substance,  and  upholding  all  things  by  the  word  of 
His  power,  when  He  had  made  purification  of  sins, 
sat  down  on  the  right  hand  of  the  Majesty  on  high;  hav- 
ing become  by  so  much  better  than  the  angels  as  He 
hath  inherited  a  more  excellent  name  than  they.'  The 
absolute  significance  of  Jesus  is  here  presented  from 
every  point  of  view.  Whether  we  think  of  God  and  His 
self-revelation  in  Israel's  history,  or  of  the  final  con- 
summation to  which  all  things  are  tending,  or  of  the 
creation  and  maintenance  of  the  world  in  which  we  live, 
or  of  the  atonement  for  sin  which  makes  access  to  God 
possible  for  us,  we  must  think  of  Christ.  He  is  the  key 
to  the  ultimate  problems  in  all  these  regions.  His  place 
and  worth  in  religion  are  incommensurable  with  the 
place  and  worth  of  any  other  beings,  human  or  angelic: 
the  final  truth  has  been  revealed;  the  final,  because 
the  perfect,  religious  relation  to  God  has  been  established 
and  is  maintained  through  Him.  Two  of  the  charac- 
teristic words  of  the  epistle  serve  to  bring  this  out.  One 
is  'better'  (xpeirrav^j  which  the  writer  uses  when  he  com- 
pares Christ  and  Christianity  with  other  religions  and 
their  representative  figures;  the  other  is  aid»(ogi  by  which 


THE   PLACE  OF   CHRIST  IN  HEBREWS    41 

he  conveys  the  idea  that  Christ  and  Christianity  are  final, 
and  that  there  is  in  truth  no  ground  for  comparisons. 
Thus  Christ  is  'better'  than  the  angels  (i4);  in  Chris- 
tianity there  is  the  introduction  of  a  'better'  hope  (7  19); 
Jesus  has  become  surety  and  mediator  of  a  'better' 
covenant,  established  upon  'better'  promises  (7  22,  86); 
the  heavenly  sanctuary  into  which  He  has  entered  with 
His  own  blood  must  be  purified  with  'better'  sacrifices 
than  the  earthly  (9  23) ;  the  blood  of  sprinkling — the  blood 
which  Jesus  shed — speaks  'better'  things  than  that  of 
Abel  (12  24).  This  is  as  though  the  writer  said  to  men 
attracted  by  the  old  religion,  Do  not  bring  it  into  com- 
parison with  what  we  owe  to  Christ;  it  cannot  stand  it. 
But  when  he  uses  almvto^  eternal,  to  characterise  the 
new  dispensation  in  its  various  aspects,  he  means  more. 
It  is  not  only  that  the  earlier  form  of  religion  with  which 
he  had  to  reckon  is  surpassed  by  that  which  looks  to  Jesus, 
but  that  the  latter  can  never  be  surpassed.  It  is  the 
eternal,  final,  perfect  form  of  man's  relation  to  God;  in 
the  strict  sense  of  the  term  it  is  incomparable;  and  it  de- 
pends for  its  very  being  on  Christ,  and  on  our  faith  in 
what  He  is  and  has  done  for  us.  It  is  in  this  conviction 
that  he  speaks  of  the  'eternal'  salvation  of  which  Christ  is 
author  to  all  who  obey  Him  (59);  of  the  'eternal'  re- 
demption which  He  won  by  His  own  blood  (9 12) ;  of 
the  'eternal'  spirit — the  final  revelation  of  divine  love 
— through  which  He  offered  Himself  without  spot  to 
God  (9  14);  of  the  'eternal'  inheritance  promised  to  those 
who  hear  His  voice  (915);  of  the  'eternal'  covenant  es- 
tablished in  His  blood  (13  20).  When  we  recognise  what 
these  expressions  mean,  we  see  that  for  the  writer  of 
this  epistle  Christ  has  the  same  absolute  religious  sig- 
nificance which  He  has  for  Paul.  It  is  not  possible, 
on  the  ground  of  the  prominence  which  he  gives  to  the 
true  humanity  and  the  genuine  religious  experience  of 


42  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

Jesus,  to  argue  that  for  him  Jesus  was  only  another  man 
like  himself,  a  perfect  pattern  of  piety  indeed,  but  no 
more;  in  his  religion — in  all  that  affected  his  relation 
as  a  sinful  man  to  God — Jesus  had  a  place  and  work 
which  belonged  to  Him  alone.  All  that  God  had  done 
for  the  salvation  of  men  He  had  done  in  Him;  nay,  all 
that  He  could  ever  do.  For  beyond  that  offering  of 
Himself  which  Jesus  had  once  made  through  the  eternal 
spirit,  there  remains  no  more  any  sacrifice  for  sin  (io26). 

IV 

CHRIST  IN  THE  FIRST  EPISTLE  OF  PETER 

The  Catholic  epistles,  which  were  the  last  of  the  early 
Christian  writings  to  secure  a  place  in  the  canon,  are 
often  taken  to  represent  an  average  type  of  Christianity, 
without  the  sharp  edges  or  the  individuality  of  view 
which  we  find  in  Paul,  John,  or  the  writer  to  the  He- 
brews. It  this  were  so,  they  might  be  more  important 
as  witnesses  to  the  place  of  Jesus  in  Christian  faith  than 
the  writings  of  the  most  original  intellects  in  the  Church; 
for,  as  Mr.  Bagehot  says  of  politics,  it  is  the  average 
man  who  is  truly  representative.  But  the  writer  cannot 
agree  with  this  estimate  of  the  Catholic  epistles.  If 
for  critical  reasons  we  leave  Second  Peter  out  of  account, 
it  would  be  hard  to  imagine  writings  with  a  more  dis- 
tinct stamp  of  individuality  upon  them  than  James,  Jude, 
and  John.  Even  the  First  Epistle  of  Peter,  influenced  as 
it  undoubtedly  is  by  modes  of  thought  and  turns  of  phrase 
which  have  their  most  characteristic  expression  in  Paul, 
is  a  document  which  no  sympathetic  reader  could  ascribe 
to  the  apostle  of  the  Gentiles.  It  is  the  work  of  another 
mind,  a  mind  with  distinct  qualities  and  virtues  of  its  own; 
and  in  view  of  the  overwhelming  attestation  of  its  author- 


THE  CHRISTIANITY  OF  FIRST  PETER    43 

ship,  there  is  no  sufficient  reason,  either  in  its  Pauline 
affinities  or  in  its  supposed  references  to  one  or  another 
form  of  legalised  persecution,  to  deny  it  to  Peter.  The 
early  chapters  of  Acts  have  already  shown  us  the  place 
which  Jesus  held  in  the  faith  and  life  of  His  chief  apostle, 
and  the  impression  they  leave  is  confirmed  by  all  we  find 
in  the  epistle.  It  emphasises  as  they  do  the  resurrection 
of  Jesus,  and  the  expectation  of  His  return.  It  calls  on 
Christians  to  sanctify  Christ  as  Lord  in  their  hearts  (3  15) , 
thus  applying  to  Him  words  which  in  Isaiah  are  applied 
to  Jehovah,  just  as  Peter  in  Acts  similarly  applies  to 
Jesus  words  which  refer  to  Jehovah  in  Joel  (Acts  221). 
The  new  life  of  Christians  and  their  hope  of  immortality  are 
due  to  Christ's  resurrection  (1 3),  and  all  that  they  know  as 
redemption  from  sin  has  been  accomplished  by  Him  (1  18  ', 
2  21  ff-,  3  18).  The  difficult  passage  extending  from  3  18  to  4 6, 
about  preaching  to  the  spirits  in  prison  and  bringing  the 
gospel  to  the  dead,  has  at  least  thus  much  of  undisputed 
meaning  in  it:  there  is  no  world,  no  time,  no  order  of 
being,  in  which  the  writer  can  think  of  any  other  sal- 
vation than  that  which  comes  by  Christ.  In  His  uni- 
verse Christ  is  supreme,  angels  and  principalities  and 
powers  being  made  subject  to  Him  (3  22).  In  the  saluta- 
tion of  the  epistle  Christ  stands  side  by  side  with  the 
Father  and  the  Spirit;  and  just  as  in  Acts  2  33  and  in 
various  Pauline  passages  (e.g.  1  Cor.  12  4"6,  Eph.  218), 
the  three  confront  man  as  the  one  divine  causality  on 
which  salvation  depends.  The  foreknowledge  of  God 
the  Father,  consecration  wrought  by  the  Spirit,  and 
sprinkling  of  the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ,  these  represent 
the  divine  action  in  the  salvation  of  men  (1 2).  But 
probably  the  most  decisive  expression  in  the  epistle,  as  ^ 
bringing  out  the  significance  of  Jesus  for  the  religion  of 
the  writer,  is  that  which  he  employs  in  1  20  f-  to  describe 
the  Christian  standing  of  its  recipients:    you,  he  says, 


44  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

who  through  Him  are  believers  in  God.  He  does  not 
mean  that  they  did  not  believe  in  God  before  they  be- 
lieved in  Christ;  there  was  true  faith  in  God  in  the 
world  before  there  was  Christian  faith.  But  although  it 
was  true,  it  was  not  faith  in  its  final  or  adequate  form: 
that  is  only  made  possible  when  men  believe  in  God 
through  Christ.  The  final  faith  in  God  owes  its  diffe- 
rentia, that  which  makes  it  what  it  is,  its  specific  and 
characteristic  qualities,  to  Him.  The  God  in  whom  the 
Christian  believes  is  the  God  who  is  Father  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  the  God  who  gave  Him  up  for  us  all,  who 
raised  Him  from  the  dead  and  gave  Him  glory,  and 
who  has  called  us  to  this  eternal  glory  in  Him.  There 
could  not  be  such  faith  in  God,  or  faith  in  such  a  God, 
apart  from  the  presence  of  Jesus,  His  atoning  death, 
and  His  exaltation  to  God's  right  hand;  it  is  only  as  we 
believe  thus  in  Jesus  that  we  can  have  the  new  Christian 
faith  in  God.  Jesus  is  not  to  the  writer  one  of  us,  who 
shares  a  faith  in  God  which  is  independently  acces- 
sible to  all  men;  He  is  the  Person  to  whom  alone  the 
Christian  religion  owes  its  character  and  its  being;  God 
would  be  a  word  of  another  meaning  to  us  but  for  Him. 
It  does  not  seem  to  go  in  any  way  beyond  the  truth  if 
we  say  that  with  the  fullest  recognition  of  what  Jesus 
was  and  suffered  as  a  man  upon  earth,  the  risen  Lord, 
in  whom  the  writer  believes,  stands  on  the  divine  side 
of  reality,  and  is  the  channel  through  which  all  God's 
power  flows  to  men  for  their  salvation. 


V 

CHRIST  IN  THE  EPISTLE  OF  JAMES 

The  Epistle  of  James  was  long  one  of  the  cruces  of 
New  Testament   criticism.     It   was  regarded   by   many 


THE   CHRISTIANITY  OF   JAMES  45 

and  is  still  regarded  by  some  as  the  earliest  of  the  ca- 
nonical books;  by  others  it  is  regarded  as  among  the 
latest,  if  not  the  last  of  all — a  writing  which  was  only 
in  time  to  secure  admission  to  the  canon  before  the  door 
was  shut.  It  says  little,  comparatively,  about  Christ, 
and  the  place  which  He  fills  in  the  life  of  the  Christian, 
and  this  has  been  used  to  support  both  opinions  about 
its  age.  It  is  argued,  on  the  one  hand,  that  it  agrees 
with  an  early  date  at  which  Christological  ideas  were 
but  little  developed;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that  it 
agrees  with  a  decidedly  later  date,  when  Christianity 
was  thoroughly  settled  in  the  world,  and  was  distin- 
guished by  its  moral  temper  rather  than  by  any  peculiar 
relation  to  a  person.  It  is  not  easy  to  assent  to  either 
argument.  It  is  not  Christological  ideas  which  we  are 
in  quest  of,  or  which  the  apostolic  writings  anywhere 
provide;  and  from  the  very  earliest  times,  as  our  ex- 
amination of  Peter's  speeches  in  Acts  has  shown,  the 
place  of  Christ  in  Christian  life  was  central  and  dominant. 
In  spite  of  the  inevitable  difference  in  an  epistle  which 
is  not  missionary  nor  evangelistic  but  disciplinary,  we 
venture  to  hold  that  it  is  so  here  also.  The  writer  in- 
troduces himself  as  a  bond-servant  of  God,  and  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ.  The  co-ordination  of  God  and  Christ 
in  this  passage,  and  the  choice  of  the  term  doMo$  to 
denote  the  author's  relation  to  God  and  Christ,  are  alike 
remarkable.  Again,  when  he  wishes  to  describe  the 
Christian  religion  in  the  most  general  terms,  he  calls  it 
'the  faith  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ'  (2  *) — that  is,  the 
faith  of  which  He  is  the  object.  We  cannot  be  certain 
in  this  passage  how  the  writer  means  us  to  take  the 
words  rfs  86&j9i  they  may  be  in  apposition  with  'our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,'  who  would  then  be  Himself  the 
glory,  the  manifested  holiness  and  love  of  God;  or,  as 
the  English  version  has  it,  and  as  seems  on  the  whole 


46  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

more  likely,  they  may  be  meant  to  describe  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  as  the  Lord  of  glory.  This  would  emphasise 
the  reference  to  His  exaltation  contained  in  the  title  Lord, 
and  it  has  an  exact  parallel  in  i  Cor.  2  8.  But  in  either 
case  it  is  important  to  notice  that  the  believing  relation 
of  Christians  to  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  must  determine 
everything  in  their  conduct:  whatever  is  inconsistent 
with  it — like  respect  of  persons — is  ipso  facto  condemned. 
If  the  name  of  Jesus  is  less  frequently  mentioned  in 
James  than  in  other  New  Testament  writings,  there  is 
none  which  is  more  pervaded  by  the  authority  of  His 
word.  If  the  Jewish  Wisdom  literature  is  present  to 
the  writer's  mind,  the  tones  of  the  sermon  on  the  mount 
echo  without  ceasing  in  his  conscience.  The  coming 
of  the  Lord  is  the  object  of  all  Christian  hope;  the  de- 
mand which  its  delay  makes  for  patience  is  the  sum 
of  all  Christian  trials  (5  7"8).  The  name  of  Jesus  is  the 
noble  name  which  has  been  invoked  upon  Christians 
at  their  baptism  (2  7),  and  pious  regard  for  it  is  a  de- 
cisive Christian  motive.  The  Lord  Jesus  Christ  is  the 
Judge  who  stands  before  the  door  (4  9) ,  and  His  name  is 
the  resource  of  the  Christian  when  confronted  with  sick- 
ness, sin,  and  death  (5  13~16).  It  ought  to  be  noticed  here 
that  the  true  reading  in  5  14  is,  Let  them  pray  over  him, 
anointing  him  with  oil  in  the  Name.  Of  course  the 
Name  meant  is  that  of  Jesus,  but  this  did  not  need  to 
be  stated:  for  the  writer,  as  for  Peter  and  for  all  Chris- 
tians, there  was  no  other  name.  The  other  examples  of 
this  use  in  the  New  Testament  have  the  same  signifi- 
cance. 'They  departed  from  the  presence  of  the  council 
rejoicing  that  they  were  counted  worthy  to  suffer  shame 
for  the  Name'  (Acts  5  41).  'For  the  sake  of  the  Name 
they  went  forth  taking  nothing  from  the  Gentiles'  (3 
John,  ver.  7).  A  writer  who  shares  this  way  of  think- 
ing about  the  name  of  Jesus,  who  calls  himself  in  one 


THE   CHRISTIANITY  OF   JUDE  47 

breath  slave  of  God  and  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  who 
finds  in  the  relation  to  Christ  and  His  name  assumed  in 
baptism  and  described  as  faith  the  finest  and  most  pow- 
erful motives,  whose  conscience  has  been  quickened  by 
the  word  of  Jesus,  and  whose  hope  means  that  Jesus 
is  coming  to  judge  the  world  and  right  the  wronged,  can 
hardly  be  said  to  stand  on  a  lower  level  of  Christianity, 
whatever  his  date,  than  the  other  New  Testament  writers. 
He  may  or  may  not  have  had  theologising  interests,  though 
he  found  no  call  to  exhibit  them  in  this  letter;  but  it 
is  clear  that  in  his  religion  Christ  occupied  the  central 
and  controlling  place.  He  would  not  have  been  at  home 
in  any  Christian  society  we  have  yet  discovered  if  it  had 
been  otherwise. 

VI 

CHRIST  IN  THE  EPISTLE  OF  JUDE  AND  IN  THE 
SECOND  EPISTLE  OF  PETER 

The  close  but  obscure  connexion  of  these  two  epistles 
justifies  us  in  taking  them  together,  and  even  if  we  re- 
gard them  both  as  pseudepigraphic  they  are  witnesses 
to  the  place  of  Jesus  in  the  mind  and  life  of  early  Chris- 
tians. If  they  do  not  tell  us  about  Peter  and  Jude,  they 
tell  us  about  other  people,  whose  faith  is  as  much  a 
matter  of  historical  fact  as  that  of  the  two  apostles. 
Like  James  (and  Paul  in  some  of  his  epistles)  both  Jude 
and  Peter  announce  themselves  as  bond-servants  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  both  introduce  for  the  first  time  in  their 
description  of  Jesus  the  word  deandr^  which  is  proper 
to  this  relation:  they  speak  of  false  teachers  and  bad 
men  'who  deny  our  only  Master  {de<m6r^v)  and  Lord 
Jesus  Christ'  (Jude,  ver.  4)7  or  'who  deny  even  the  Mas- 
ter who  bought  them'  (2  Peter  2  *).     In  the  first  of  these 


48  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

passages  it  has  been  questioned  whether  two  persons 
are  not  meant:  does  not  'our  only  Master,'  it  is  said, 
signify  God,  in  distinction  from  'our  Lord  Jesus  Christ'? 
The  same  question  is  raised  again  in  2  Peter  i1,  where 
it  is  open  to  discussion  whether  the  writer  speaks  of  '  the 
righteousness  of  our  God  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ' 
(one  person,  as  it  is  rendered  in  the  Revised  Version), 
or  of  'the  righteousness  of  our  God,  and  the  Saviour 
Jesus  Christ'  (two  persons,  as  in  margin  of  Revised 
Version).  The  difficulty  is  the  same  as  in  Titus  2  13, 
where  the  text  of  the  Revised  Version  has  'the  glory  of 
our  great  God  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ'  (one  person), 
and  the  margin,  'the  glory  of  the  great  God,  and  our 
Saviour  Jesus  Christ'  (two  persons).  Strict  grammar 
favours  the  rendering  according  to  which  there  is  only 
one  person  mentioned  in  all  these  places,  Jesus  Christ,  who 
is  called  'our  only  Master  and  Lord,'  and  'our  great  God 
and  Saviour.'  There  are  cases,  however,  in  which  strict 
grammar  is  misleading,  and  these  may  be  among  them. 
It  is  awkward  to  call  Jesus  Christ  'our  God  and  Saviour' 
in  2  Peter  1  \  and  then  to  speak  in  the  very  next  sentence 
of  the  knowledge  of  '  God,  and  of  Jesus  our  Lord.'  Dr. 
Moulton  thinks  that  'familiarity  with  the  everlasting 
apotheosis  that  flaunts  itself  in  the  papyri  and  inscrip- 
tions of  Ptolemaic  and  Imperial  times  lends  strong  sup- 
port to  Wendland's  contention  that  Christians,  from  the 
latter  part  of  the  first  century  onward,  deliberately  an- 
nexed for  their  Divine  Master  the  phraseology  that  was 
impiously  arrogated  to  themselves  by  some  of  the  worst 
of  men.'1  A  writer  like  Jude,  however,  who  is  conscious 
of  sustaining  a  tradition,  and  exhorts  his  readers  to 
contend  earnestly  for  the  faith  once  for  all  delivered 
to  the  saints,  would  hardly  have  described  Jesus  as  the 
only    SecTzdrrj?  and   xupto$  merely  under  constraint  from 

1  Grammar  of  New  Testament  Greek,  i.  84. 


THE  CHRISTIANITY  OF  SECOND  PETER    49 

the  impieties  of  emperor  worship.  His  divine  greatness 
is  realised  on  independent  grounds  and  represented  in 
independent  ways.  It  is  conspicuous  in  the  two  pas- 
sages which  always  redeem  Jude  in  the  common  Chris- 
tian mind  from  the  reproach  of  quoting  Enoch.  One  is 
the  sublime  doxology  in  vv.  24,  25,  in  which  glory,  maj- 
esty, dominion  and  power  are  ascribed  'to  the  only 
wise  God  our  Saviour  through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord': 
it  is  this  mediation  of  Christ  in  Christian  worship  in 
which  His  final  significance  for  faith  is  expressed.  The 
other  is  the  equally  sublime  exhortation  of  v.  20:  'But 
ye,  beloved,  building  yourselves  up  on  your  most  holy  faith, 
praying  in  the  Holy  Spirit,  keep  yourselves  in  the  love 
of  God,  waiting  for  the  mercy  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
unto  eternal  life.'  Here  as  in  so  many  other  passages 
we  are  confronted  with  the  Holy  Spirit,  God,  and  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  as  the  total  manifestation  of  that 
on  which  our  salvation  depends.  It  is  in  the  same  region 
as  that  in  which  God  and  His  Spirit  work  that  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  works;  it  is  to  that  side  of  reality  that  He 
belongs;  the  whole  religious  life  of  men  is  divinely  deter- 
mined by  Him  as  it  could  not  be  by  any  other;  this  is 
His  permanent  and  incomparable  place  in  the  faith  and 
life  of  Christians. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  look  for  peculiarities  which  dis- 
tinguish 2nd  Peter  from  Jude:  its  dependence  can  hardly 
be  questioned.  It  is  enough  to  remark  that  the  writer 
has  a  strong  partiality  for  those  full  descriptions  which 
bring  out  the  importance  of  Christ  to  the  Christian 
mind;  he  speaks  three  times  of  'our  Lord  Jesus  Christ/ 
three  times  again  of  '  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,' 
and  once  of  '  the  apostles  of  our  Lord  and  Saviour.'  This 
fulness  does  not  strike  one  in  reading  as  an  orthodox 
formalism,  but  rather  conveys  a  deep  sense,  on  the  part 
of  the  writer,  of  the  superhuman  greatness  of  the  per- 
4 


5o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

son  ox  whom  he  speaks.  It  is  the  oldest,  it  might  be 
said  the  only,  doctrine  of  revealed  religion,  that  salvation 
belongs  to  the  Lord;  and  when  Jesus  is  habitually  con- 
fessed as  Lord  and  Saviour,  His  significance  for  Christian 
faith  is  absolute  and  divine. 


VII 

CHRIST  IN  THE  SYNOPTIC  GOSPELS 

When  we  come  to  the  synoptic  gospels,  we  are  con- 
fronted with  difficulties  of  a  new  kind.  The  synoptic 
gospels  contain  not  only  the  testimony  of  the  writers  to 
Jesus,  but  also  (through  that  testimony)  the  testimony 
of  Jesus  to  Himself.  It  is  certain  that  the  writers  of 
the  gospels  drew  no  clear  and  conscious  distinction  be- 
tween these  two  things,  and  could  not  have  conceived 
that  one  of  them  should  ever  be  used  to  discredit  the 
other.  They  never  thought  that  the  place  which  Jesus 
had  in  their  faith  was  anything  else  than  the  place  which 
belonged  to  Him,  and  was  truly  and  rightly  His:  they 
never  thought  they  were  giving  Him  what  was  not  His 
due,  or  what  He  had  not  really  claimed:  the  distinc- 
tion between  the  religion  in  which  they  lived  and  the 
historical  support  which  could  be  asserted  for  it  in  the 
personality  and  life  of  Jesus  was  one  which  had  no  formal 
existence  for  them.  This  may  be  said  quite  confidently 
in  spite  of  all  that  we  hear  about  the  'apologetic'  motives 
which  are  alleged  to  account  for  so  much  of  what  we 
read  in  our  gospels.  Jesus,  we  are  told,  had  such  and 
such  a  character  or  value  in  the  faith  of  His  disciples, 
and  in  order  to  justify  this  character  there  must  be  such 
and  such  words  or  deeds  or  events  in  His  life.  If  they 
were  not  supplied  in  tradition  they  were  produced  more 


•CHRIST  IN  THE   SYNOPTIC   GOSPELS     51 

or  less  spontaneously  by  the  Christian  consciousness 
or  imagination.  There  was  no  sin  in  this,  no  intent 
to  deceive  either  others  or  oneself;  Christ  must  have 
said  or  done  such  and  such  things,  and  of  course,  there- 
fore, He  did  say  and  do  them.  He  is  represented  in 
our  gospels  as  so  saying  and  doing  them,  and  that  is 
why  it  is  so  difficult  to  use  the  gospels  simply  as  historical 
documents.  Their  writers  have  no  independent  his- 
torical interest,  and  what  they  give  us  is  not  the  repre- 
sentation of  Christ  as  He  really  was,  but  Christ  as  to 
them  He  must  have  been,  Christ  transfigured  in  the 
luminous  haze  of  faith.  The  task  of  the  historian  is 
to  dissipate  the  haze,  to  see  Jesus  as  He  really  was,  to 
reduce  Him  to  the  historic  proportions  in  which  alone 
He  can  have  lived  and  moved  among  men.  To  faith 
it  may  be  an  ungrateful  task,  in  performing  which  it 
is  impossible  to  avoid  wounding  the  tenderest  feelings; 
yet  faith  in  God  can  have  no  interest  superior  to  that 
of  truth,  and  ought  to  be  confident  that  whatever  it  may 
lose  in  the  process  the  end  can  be  nothing  but  gain. 

At  the  point  which  we  have  now  reached  in  our  dis- 
cussion it  is  necessary  to  have  the  possibilities  here  in- 
dicated in  view,  but  the  critical  appreciation  of  them 
will  come  later.  It  will  be  sufficient  for  our  present 
purpose  to  say  that  while  everything  that  we  find  in  an 
evangelist  concerning  Jesus — including  all  that  is  said 
and  done  by  Jesus  Himself— must  be  taken  into  account 
in  reproducing  that  evangelist's  religion,  we  shall  here 
confine  our  attention  to  that  minimum  of  matter  in  which 
the  mind  of  the  evangelist  can  be  clearly  distinguished 
from  that  of  his  subject.  There  are  characteristics  in 
Mark,  in  Matthew,  and  in  Luke  which  belong  to  each 
in  particular,  and  in  these,  though  not  in  these  only,  we 
have  a  clue  to  what  we  seek. 


52  JESUS  AND  THE  GOSPEL 

(a)  The  Gospel  according  to  Mark 

The  oldest  of  our  gospels  has  a  title:  ' the  beginning 
of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  (Son  of  God).'  It  can 
hardly  be  doubted  that  the  author  uses  the  term  gospel 
in  the  sense  of  the  apostolic  church.  Luke  does  not  use 
it  at  all,  and  Matthew  never  without  qualification  (see 
Matt.  4 23,  9 35,  24  u,  26  13) ;  but  Mark  has  it  six  times  with- 
out any  qualification,  and  in  two  others  he  has  'the  gospel 
of  God'  (i14),  indicating  its  author,  and  'the  gospel  of 
Jesus  Christ'  (i1),  indicating  its  subject.  He  does  not 
call  his  book  a  gospel,  but  to  present  Jesus  as  He  is  pre- 
sented in  this  book  is  to  preach  the  gospel,  or  at  least  to 
exhibit,  as  Mark  understood  them,  the  facts  on  the  basis 
of  which  the  gospel  was  preached.  For  him  Jesus  is  not 
so  much  a  preacher  of  the  gospel,  though  he  says  that 
He  came  proclaiming  the  gospel  of  God,  and  saying 
'Repent  and  believe  in  the  gospel';  He  is  the  subject  of 
the  gospel  and  its  contents.  He  is  not  the  first  of  a 
series  of  messengers  who  all  came  with  the  same  message, 
and  were  all  related  to  it  in  the  same  way;  the  message 
itself  which  is  called  gospel  is  embodied  in  Him,  and  the 
only  way  to  deliver  it  is  to  make  Him  visible.  This  is 
implied  in  the  very  use  of  the  term  gospel,  and  it  is  suf- 
ficient to  put  Mark,  as  a  witness  to  the  place  of  Jesus 
in  Christianity,  in  line  with  those  whose  testimony  we 
have  already  examined.  Whatever  his  Christology  may 
be,  Jesus  has  a  place  in  his  religion  to  which  there  is  no 
analogy.  The  gospel  is  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  as  it 
is  not  the  gospel  of  any  other.  Could  Mark,  or  can  we, 
conceive  any  other  figure  sharing  in  the  place  and  the 
religious  significance  of  Jesus  as  they  are  presented  to 
us  in  his  brief  and  vivid  record? 

Mark,  as  his  title  shows,  conceived  Jesus  as  the  Christ. 
What  this   means  has  been   explained   already   in   the 


THE  CHRISTIANITY  OF  MARK  53 

section  on  primitive  Christian  preaching.  It  means  that 
he  thought  of  Jesus  while  he  wrote  as  exalted  at  God's 
right  hand,  and  ready  to  come  again  and  to  establish 
the  Kingdom  of  God  with  power.  But  the  present 
exaltation  of  Jesus  is  not  unrelated  to  his  past.  The 
character  or  dignity  or  function  of  the  Christ  attached  to 
Jesus  while  He  was  on  earth,  though  it  was  known  at 
first  only  to  Himself,  and  though  it  only  came  to  be 
apprehended,  fitfully  and  uncertainly,  even  by  those  who 
knew  Him  best.  This  has  indeed  been  disputed  and 
denied  in  recent  times.  An  acute  but  unbalanced  German 
scholar,  the  late  Professor  Wrede  of  Breslau,  argued 
that  no  one  ever  thought  of  Jesus  as  the  Christ  till  after 
the  resurrection,  and  that  many  of  the  difficulties  and 
obscurities  in  the  Gospel  of  Mark  are  due  to  the  evan- 
gelist's efforts  to  carry  back  into  the  career  of  Jesus  upon 
earth  this  conception  of  Messiahship  which  is  applicable 
only  to  the  Risen  Lord.  This,  again,  we  do  not  need 
to  consider  here.  Whether  he  was  justified  or  not  in 
doing  so,  it  is  certain  that  the  evangelist  does  carry  back 
the  conception  of  the  Christ  into  the  lifetime  of  Jesus; 
he  represents  Peter  confessing  Him  to  be  the  Christ, 
and  Jesus  accepting  the  confession,  and  making  it  the 
starting-point  for  teaching  those  truths  about  Himself 
and  His  work  which  peculiarly  constituted  '  the  gospel.' 
As  Wellhausen  has  pointed  out,  there  is  a  whole  section 
of  the  Gospel  according  to  Mark,  that  which  extends 
from  Peter's  confession  (827)  to  Jesus'  reply  to  the  am- 
bitious request  of  the  sons  of  Zebedee  (10 45),  which 
has  a  peculiarly  'Christian'  character.  It  is  concerned 
very  much  with  the  doctrine  of  the  suffering  Christ,  the 
Son  of  Man,  who  has  come  to  give  His  life  a  ransom  for 
many,  and  who  after  His  death  will  come  again  in  the 
glory  of  His  Father  with  the  holy  angels;  and  whatever 
its  historic  relation  to  Jesus,  it  certainly  embodies  the 


54  JESUS   AND    THE   GOSPEL 

convictions  of  Mark  as  to  the  place  of  Jesus  in  religion. 
Apart  from  this,  we  are  not  able  to  say  much.  Mark 
never  refers  to  any  fulfilment  of  prophecy  in  the  life  of 
Jesus,  as  proving  or  illuminating  His  Messianic  character; 
the  textual  difficulties  connected  with  the  quotation  of 
Malachi  and  Isaiah  in  chap,  i  2f,>  make  it  quite  probable 
that  these  verses  were  inserted  by  another  hand.  It  is 
more  plausible  to  argue  that  he  thought  of  the  mighty 
works  which  he  records,  works  in  the  main  of  healing 
love,  as  appropriate  to  the  Messianic  character;  this  at 
least  would  be  in  keeping  with  the  line  of  thought  taken 
in  Acts  2  22,  10 38  by  Peter,  with  whose  name  the  Gos- 
pel of  Mark  is  connected  in  the  earliest  tradition.  In 
His  baptism,  Jesus  was  anointed  with  Holy  Spirit  and 
power,  and  the  manifestations  of  that  power  in  His  life- 
time were  indications  of  what  He  was.  The  words  '  Son 
of  God'  in  Mark  i ■  are  of  doubtful  authenticity,  and  we 
cannot  argue  from  them.  Where  they  stand,  they  are 
probably  meant  to  be  taken  as  synonymous  with  Christ 
or  Messiah.  As  far  as  we  can  see,  it  is  in  His  baptism 
with  the  Holy  Spirit  that  Jesus,  as  Mark  understood  it, 
became  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God.  From  that  hour  He 
was  all  that  in  the  faith  and  experience  of  Christians  He 
ever  came  to  be.  But  He  could  not  tell  what  He  was 
as  one  can  impart  a  piece  of  indifferent  information  to 
another.  He  had  to  reveal  Himself  as  what  He  was, 
in  life  and  word  and  works;  He  had  to  be  discovered 
as  what  He  was  by  men  who  associated  with  Him  in 
obedience,  trust,  and  love.  The  truncated  form  in  which 
the  gospel  has  come  to  us,  with  no  resurrection  scene, 
and  no  words  of  the  Risen  Lord,  prevents  us  from  seeing 
as  directly  in  Mark,  as  we  do  in  the  other  evangelists, 
the  full  scope  of  the  writer's  faith.  But  we  have  seen 
what  he  means  by  the  term  gospel,  and  we  know  from 
words  which  he  ascribes  to  Jesus  that  he  believed  the 


THE   CHRISTIANITY  OF  MATTHEW       55 

gospel  to  be  meant  for  all  mankind  (13  10,  14  9).  Jesus 
exalted  as  Lord  and  Saviour  of  all,  the  Jesus  whom  the 
evangelist  can  exhibit  to  us  in  this  character  even  in  the 
days  of  His  flesh,  is  the  same  incomparable  and  incom- 
mensurable person  whom  we  have  met  everywhere  in 
New  Testament  religion. 

(b)  The  Gospel  according  to  Matthew 

In  the  Gospel  according  to  Matthew  it  is  much  easier 
to  distinguish  the  author  from  the  subject,  for  there 
is  much  more  which  belongs  to  the  author  alone.  The 
first  two  chapters  have  no  parallel  in  the  earlier  gos- 
pel narrative,  and  they  show  us  at  once  the  peculiar 
place  which  Jesus  held  in  the  evangelist's  faith.  Like 
all  New  Testament  writers  he  conceives  Jesus  as  the 
Christ.  Whether  'the  book  of  the  generation'  (1  x)  refers 
to  the  genealogy  and  the  stories  of  the  birth  only,  or 
to  the  narrative  as  a  whole,  it  is  concerned  with  Jesus 
as  Messiah,  son  of  David,  son  of  Abraham.  The  idea 
underlying  the  genealogy  is  that  the  history  of  Israel, 
which  means  the  history  of  God's  gracious  dealing  with 
the  human  race,  is  consummated  in  Jesus.  He  is  the 
ideal  Son  of  David  to  whom  it  all  looks  forward,  and  it 
is  in  Him  that  all  the  promises  made  by  God  to  the 
fathers  are  to  be  fulfilled.  The  characteristic  of  the 
Gospel  according  to  Matthew,  or  perhaps  we  should 
rather  say  the  characteristic  interest  of  the  author,  is  seen 
in  his  continual  reference  to  Scriptures  which  have  been 
fulfilled  in  Jesus.  The  proof  from  prophecy  that  Jesus 
is  the  Messiah  preoccupies  him  from  beginning  to  end: 
'that  it  might  be  fulfilled  which  was  spoken  by  the  Lord 
through  the  prophet'  runs  through  his  work  like  a  re- 
frain. It  is  quite  true  that  many  of  his  proofs  are  to 
us  unconvincing.     We  can  see  no  religious  and  no  in- 


56  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

tellectual  value  in  references  like  those  in  Matthew  2  15 
to  Hosea,  or  Matthew  2  18  to  Jeremiah.  We  do  not 
think  of  a  Messianic  programme,  set  out  beforehand  in 
the  Old  Testament,  and  carried  through  by  Jesus,  with 
precise  correspondence,  from  point  to  point;  corre- 
spondence, we  feel,  is  one  thing,  and  fulfilment  another. 
But  this  only  means  that  the  form  through  which  the 
evangelist  expresses  his  conviction  about  Jesus  is  in- 
adequate to  the  truth  in  his  mind.  What  he  is  assured 
of  is  that  the  whole  divine  intention  which  pervades  the 
ancient  revelation  has  been  consummated  at  last,  and 
that  the  consummation  is  Jesus.  The  argument  from 
prophecy  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ  is  not  for  us  an  argu- 
ment that  this  or  that  detail  in  the  life  of  Jesus  answers 
to  this  or  that  phrase  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures;  it  is 
the  argument  that  the  Old  Testament  and  the  New 
are  one  and  continuous,  and  that  what  God  is  prepar- 
ing in  the  one  He  has  achieved  in  the  other.  Imperfect 
as  is  the  form  in  which  this  is  occasionally  conveyed  by  the 
evangelist,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  this  is  substan- 
tially his  thought.  The  unity  of  the  Old  Testament 
and  the  New,  which  makes  Jesus  the  centre  and  the 
key  to  God's  purposes,  was  the  core  of  the  evangelist's 
religious  convictions,  and  it  is  in  harmony  with  the  place 
assigned  to  Jesus  in  the  common  faith. 

In  speaking  of  the  title  of  St.  Mark's  Gospel — 'the 
beginning  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  (Son  of  God)' — 
it  has  been  remarked  that  the  bracketed  words,  which 
are  of  doubtful  genuineness,  are  probably  to  be  taken  as 
synonymous  with  the  Christ.  Though  this  is  probable, 
however,  it  is  by  no  means  certain.  It  is  quite  possible, 
if  Mark  wrote  these  words,  that  he  understood  them  as 
Paul  would  have  done;  and  that  though  the  narrative 
part  of  his  gospel,  which  is  included  in  the  limits  set  in 
Acts  1 2l  L,  represents  the  Divine  Sonship  of  Jesus  as  in  a 


THE  CHRISTIANITY  OF  MATTHEW       57 

peculiar  way  connected  with  His  baptism,  Mark  may 
have  conceived  it  in  a  higher  and  independent  sense. 
In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  consciousness  of  Divine  Son- 
ship — in  other  words,  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God — is  the 
characteristic  mark  of  the  Christian  religion,  the  very 
God  whom  Christians  worship  being  the  God  who  is 
Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  it  has  always  seemed 
to  the  writer  difficult  to  believe  that  Son  of  God  when 
applied  by  Christians  to  Jesus  meant  nothing  but  Mes- 
siah. It  must  have  taken  an  effort  of  which  Christians 
were  incapable  to  evacuate  the  title  of  everything  filial 
in  the  Christian  sense,  of  everything  which  went  to  con- 
stitute their  own  religious  consciousness,  while  yet  that 
consciousness  owed  its  very  being  to  the  Divine  Son- 
ship  of  Jesus.  But  be  the  case  as  it  may  with  Mark, 
it  is  certain  that  to  Matthew  the  Son  of  God  is  more 
than  the  Messianic  King.  It  would  be  inappropriate  to 
refer  here  to  words  which  the  evangelist  records  as  spoken 
by  Jesus;  such  words  will  come  up  for  consideration  at 
a  later  stage.  It  is  enough  to  recall  the  story  of  the  birth 
of  the  Christ.  The  evangelist  sees  in  it  the  fulfilment 
of  the  prophecy  of  Isaiah:  Behold  the  virgin  shall  be 
with  child,  and  shall  bring  forth  a  son,  and  they  shall 
call  his  name  Immanuel.  Attention  has  usually  been 
concentrated  here  on  the  supernatural  mode  in  which 
Jesus  entered  the  world;  but  if  we  wish  to  see  the  place 
he  held  in  the  religion  of  the  evangelist,  and  of  those 
for  whom  he  wrote,  the  most  important  word  is  the 
name  of  the  child.  Immanuel,  which  is,  being  inter- 
preted, God  with  us\  it  is  here  his  significance  lies. 
The  Divine  Sonship  is  something  more  than  is  declared 
with  power  in  the  resurrection;  it  is  something  more 
than  is  revealed  to  Jesus  Himself  in  the  baptism;  it  is 
something  essential  to  this  person,  something  which 
enters  into   the   very   constitution   of  His  being,   which 


58  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

connects  Him  immediately  with  God,  and  makes  His 
presence  with  us  the  guarantee  and  the  equivalent  of  the 
presence  of  God  Himself.  This,  at  least,  is  how  the 
evangelist  conceived  it,  and  nothing  could  show  more 
clearly  the  place  which  Jesus  filled  in  his  faith.  Of 
necessity  it  is  a  place  in  which  He  can  have  neither 
rival  nor  partner.  As  God  with  us,  Jesus  is  protected 
by  the  same  jealousy  which  says,  Thou  shalt  have  no 
other  Gods  before  me.  In  everything  that  concerns  our 
religious  life,  our  relations  to  God,  we  must  be  deter- 
mined by  Him  alone. 

There  is  another  point  in  his  narrative  at  which  the 
peculiarities  of  Matthew's  gospel  may  be  supposed  to 
throw  light  on  the  religious  value  which  he  ascribed  to 
Jesus.  It  is  that  at  which  Peter  makes  the  confession 
of  Jesus'  Messiahship  at  Caesarea  Philippi.  In  Mark's 
version  Jesus  asks  simply,  Whom  say  ye  that  I  am?  and 
Peter  answers  as  simply,  Thou  art  the  Christ.  In  Mat- 
thew both  the  question  and  the  answer  are  significantly 
expanded.  The  question  becomes,  Who  do  men  say 
that  the  Son  oj  Man  is?  and  the  answer,  Thou  art 
the  Christ,  the  Son  oj  the  living  God.  The  balancing  of 
the  Son  of  Man  and  the  Son  of  the  living  God  is  re- 
markable. Possibly  there  is  the  germ  in  it  of  what 
came  centuries  afterwards  to  be  known  as  the  doctrine 
of  the  two  distinct  natures,  divine  and  human,  in  the  one 
person  of  the  Saviour;  but  even  if  such  precise  theo- 
logical definition  were  far  from  the  evangelist's  thoughts, 
we  feel  that  the  person  so  solemnly  and  sublimely  de- 
scribed is  one  who  stands  quite  alone.  In  a  way  of  which 
we  cannot  but  be  sensible,  though  we  may  not  be  able 
to  explain  it,  He  is  related  to  God  and  to  man,  and  has 
a  significance  for  God  and  for  man  which  cannot  be 
shared.  To  think  of  Him  as  a  person  who  can  be  put 
into  His  place  among  the  distinguished  servants  of  God 


THE  CHRISTIANITY  OF  MATTHEW       59 

who  from  time  to  time  appear  in  the  world  to  animate 
and  bless  their  weaker  fellows — as  'a  prophet,  or  one 
of  the  prophets' — is  not  to  think  of  Him  as  Matthew 
does. 

The  place  which  Jesus  occupied  in  the  faith  of  Matthew 
is,  however,  seen  most  conspicuously  and  unambiguously 
in  his  account  of  the  appearance  of  the  Risen  Saviour  to 
the  eleven.  Those  who  will  not  regard  as  historical  the 
words  ascribed  to  Jesus  on  this  occasion  are  all  the  more 
bound  to  look  at  them,  as  they  usually  do,  as  expressing 
the  evangelist's  own  faith.  Jesus  is  exalted  as  Lord  of  all.' 
He  has  all  power  given  to  Him  in  heaven  and  on  earth. 
He  commissions  His  disciples,  in  virtue  of  this  exalta- 
tion, to  go  and  make  all  nations  His  disciples,  baptizing 
them  in  the  name  of  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy 
Spirit,  and  teaching  them  to  observe  all  things  whatso- 
ever He  had  commanded;  and  He  promises  them  His 
abiding  presence  to  the  end  of  the  world.  Granting  for 
the  moment  that  what  we  hear  in  this  place  is  not  so 
much  the  historical  voice  of  Jesus  as  the  voice  of  the 
Catholic  Church  telling  itself  through  the  evangelist  what 
it  has  realised  Jesus  to  be,  there  can  be  no  mistake  about 
the  place  in  which  it  sets  Him.  He  shares  the  throne  of 
God,  and  there  is  no  power  in  heaven  or  on  earth  which 
can  •  dispute  with  His.  He  is  destined  to  a  universal 
sovereignty  in  grace,  and  sends  His  chosen  witnesses  to 
make  disciples  of  all  the  nations.  Baptism,  the  initiatory 
rite  of  the  new  religious  community,  is  baptism  in  the 
name  of  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Spirit;  its 
value  is  that  when  men  accept  it  in  penitence  and  faith 
it  brings  their  life  into  vital  relation  to  that  name;  all 
that  is  signified  by  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Spirit  becomes 
theirs;  the  benediction,  inspiration,  and  protection  of  this 
holy  name  enter  into  and  cover  all  their  life.  But  here, 
as  we  have  often  had  occasion  to  remark  already,  the  Son 


6o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

stands  in  the  same  line  with  the  Father  and  the  Spirit, 
confronting  all  nations.  He  belongs  to  the  Divine  as 
contrasted  with  the  human  side  in  religious  experience. 
That  He  was  truly  human  it  could  never  have  occurred  to 
the  evangelist  to  doubt;  but  just  as  little  could  it  have  oc- 
curred to  him  to  think  that  He  was  merely  human,  another 
child  of  the  same  race,  to  whom  we  are  related  precisely 
as  we  are  to  each  other.  Jesus  as  Matthew  sees  Him  and 
exhibits  Him  at  last  is  the  Lord— the  Lord  who  is  exalted 
in  divine  power  and  glory,  and  who  is  perpetually  present 
with  His  own. 

How  far  this  conception  of  Jesus  modified  the  presenta- 
tion of  His  life  in  the  gospel,  or  whether  it  modified  it  at 
all,  are  questions  reserved  for  the  present:  what  we  are 
concerned  to  note  is  that  His  place  in  the  faith  of  the 
evangelist  is  that  which  is  assigned  Him  in  New  Testa- 
ment faith  in  general.  The  facts  may  or  may  not  be  able 
to  support  His  greatness,  but  this  greatness  is  what  they 
are  asked  to  support. 

(c)  The  Gospel  according  to  Luke 

In  the  third  gospel  it  is  easier  even  than  in  Matthew 
to  point  out  the  characteristics  of  the  writer's  faith. 
They  are  conspicuous  alike  in  what  he  tells  of  the  birth 
of  Jesus,  and  of  His  intercourse  with  the  disciples  after 
the  resurrection.  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God; 
and  the  evangelist  does  not  leave  us  in  any  doubt  as  to 
what  these  epithets  mean.  He  does,  indeed,  in  the 
opening  chapters,  use  language  of  a  peculiarly  Jewish  cast 
in  describing  the  Saviour  and  the  work  He  had  to  do: 
'He  shall  be  great  and  shall  be  called  Son  of  the  High- 
est, and  the  Lord  God  shall  give  unto  Him  the  throne  of 
His  father  David,  and  He  shall  rule  over  the  house  of 
Jacob  for  ever,  and  of  His  kingdom  there  shall  be  no 


THE  CHRISTIANITY  OF  LUKE  61 

end'  (i 32  £).  But  like  Matthew  he  refers  the  origination 
of  the  historic  person  who  is  the  subject  of  this  prophecy 
to  the  immediate  act  of  God.  'The  Holy  Spirit  shall 
come  upon  thee,'  the  angel  says  to  His  mother,  'and  the 
power  of  the  Most  High  shall  overshadow  thee;  where- 
fore also  that  which  is  to  be  born  shall  be  called  holy, 
the  Son  of  God'  (i 35).  Clearly,  to  the  writer,  the  Di- 
vine Sonship  of  Jesus  was  nothing  official,  nothing  to 
which  any  Israelite  might  aspire,  or  to  which  any  man 
by  the  favour  of  heaven  might  be  promoted;  it  is  of  His 
very  being,  and  in  the  nature  of  the  case  can  belong  to 
Him  alone.  Any  one  who  will  may  say  that  the  mode 
in  which  the  personality  of  Jesus  originated  cannot  be  a 
question  of  religious  importance:  but,  however  that  may 
be,  those  who  believed  that  His  personality  did  originate 
in  this  unparalleled  way  must  have  given  Him  an  un- 
paralleled place  in  their  faith. 

In  the  body  of  his  gospel  the  scene  which  throws  most 
light  upon  Luke's  way  of  regarding  Jesus,  is  that  which 
is  given  in  ch.  4 16~30.  This  scene  is  antedated  by  the 
evangelist,  as  is  clear  from  the  reference  to  a  ministry  of 
Jesus  at  Capernaum  in  ver.  23,  but  it  stands  where  it  does 
because  it  is  characteristic  for  the  writer,  and  forms  to 
his  mind  an  appropriate  frontispiece  to  the  story  of  Jesus. 
The  heart  of  it  lies  in  the  words,  This  day  is  this  scrip- 
ture fulfilled  in  your  ears;  but  as  these  are  words  of 
Jesus,  not  of  the  evangelist,  their  full  import  need  not 
be  considered  here.  All  we  are  called  to  remark  is  that 
Luke,  though  he  makes  no  continuous  appeal,  like  Mat- 
thew's, to  the  argument  from  prophecy,  still  writes  from 
the  beginning  in  the  consciousness  that  God's  gracious 
promises  to  His  people  were  fulfilled  in  Jesus.  'The 
Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me,  for  He  hath  anointed 
Me  to  preach  glad  tidings  to  the  poor.'  The  universal 
scope  of  the  gospel — the  fact  that  it  is  destined  for  all 


62  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

mankind,  and  that  Jesus,  therefore,  is  Lord  of  all— is 
hinted  also  in  this  typical  introduction  to  His  ministry. 
He  is  rejected  in  His  own  city,  but  reminds  His  un- 
believing townsmen  how  in  ancient  times,  though  there 
were  many  widows  and  many  lepers  in  Israel,  only  a 
Sidonian  and  a  Syrian  had  experienced  the  mercy  of 
God.  But  all  that  is  characteristic  in  Luke's  faith  is 
condensed  into  what  he  tells  us  of  the  Risen  Jesus  and 
His  intercourse  with  the  eleven.  It  is  the  Risen  Jesus 
who  is  the  Christ,  and  we  see  in  Luke  24  44  ff-  his  sig- 
nificance in  the  evangelist's  religion.  It  is  He  who  is 
the  subject  of  the  Old  Testament  throughout;  in  the 
law  of  Moses  and  the  prophets  and  the  Psalms— in  the 
three  great  divisions  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures—there 
are  things  written  which  have  been  fulfilled  in  Him,  and 
to  which  His  life,  death,  and  resurrection  are  the  only 
key.  He  opens  the  mind  of  His  disciples  to  understand 
these  things.  The  purport  of  all  revelation,  He  would 
have  them  know— and  this  certainly  is  the  understand- 
ing of  Luke— is  that  the  Christ  should  suffer,  and  should 
rise  again  on  the  third  day,  and  that  repentance  for  re- 
mission of  sins  should  be  preached  in  His  name  to  all 
nations.  That  the  commission  implied  in  this  may  be 
properly  discharged,  and  the  disciples  prove  worthy 
witnesses  to  their  Master,  He  promises  to  send  forth 
upon  them  the  promise  of  the  Father,  the  Spirit  which 
will  invest  them  in  power  from  on  high.  It  needs  a 
greater  effort  than  we  can  easily  make  to  realise  that 
Jesus  had  the  place  which  this  implies  in  the  hearts  of 
men  who  knew  Him  upon  earth.  But  it  is  not  open  to 
question  that  it  is  the  place  He  had  in  the  mind  of  Luke. 
He  owed  His  being  in  the  world  to  the  immediate  and 
mysterious  act  of  God.  In  His  baptism  He  Himself 
was  clothed  with  power  from  on  high.  The  great  and 
gracious   purpose   of   God,   shadowed   forth   in   ancient 


THE   CHRISTIANITY   OF  LUKE  63 

Scripture,  was  achieved  in  Him.  The  hope  of  the  sinful 
world  lay  in  the  repentance  and  remission  of  sins  preached 
in  His  name.  The  spiritual  power — in  other  words,  the 
power  of  God — which  accompanied  the  apostles'  testi- 
mony and  evoked  new  life  in  the  souls  of  men,  was  His 
gift.  The  words  in  ch.  24s2 — 'they  worshipped  Him' — 
are  possibly  not  part  of  the  original  text,  but  there  is 
nothing  in  them  out  of  harmony  with  this  representation 
of  Jesus.  The  person  whose  origin  and  career  are  such 
as  the  evangelist  describes — the  Person  who  is  now  ex- 
alted to  God's  right  hand,  and  who  sends  the  promised 
Spirit — is  not  a  member  of  the  Church  but  its  Head. 
Luke  has  a  peculiar  interest  in  His  humanity;  on  six 
separate  occasions  he  tells  us  of  His  prayers,  besides 
referring  to  His  habit  of  withdrawing  to  desert  places 
for  devotion;  but  side  by  side  with  this  simple  human 
dependence  on  God  there  is  that  transcendent  something 
which  is  fully  revealed  in  His  exaltation,  in  His  gift  of 
the  Spirit,  and  in  His  mission  of  the  apostles  to  all  the 
world.  It  is  not  the  particular  way  in  which  Luke  con- 
ceived this  or  any  part  of  it — in  other  words,  it  is  not  his 
Christology  as  an  intellectual  construction — with  which 
we  are  concerned;  it  is  the  fact  that  Jesus  had  in  the 
religious  life  of  the  evangelist  the  place  and  the  impor- 
tance which  are  here  implied.  Not  that  there  is  anything 
in  it  which  we  have  not  seen  elsewhere,  but  it  shows  us 
once  more,  and  if  possible  more  clearly  than  ever,  how 
incomparable  is  the  significance  of  Jesus  for  Christian 
faith. 

It  is  natural  for  us  to  examine  the  synoptic  gospels 
separately,  yet  we  must  not  overlook  the  fact  that  they 
are  not  independent,  and  that  it  is  not  the  personal 
peculiarities  of  their  authors  which  make  them  important. 
In  point  of  fact  they  are  anonymous  writings,  and  though 
there  are  excellent  reasons  for  connecting  them  with  the 


64  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

persons  whose  names  they  bear,  it  is  not  on  this  that 
their  value  depends.  It  lies  greatly  in  the  fact  that  they 
were  produced  in  the  Church,  for  the  Church,  and  by 
men  who  were  members  of  the  Church,  so  that  they  are 
witnesses  to  us  not  of  the  individual  peculiarities  of  their 
writers,  but  of  the  common  faith.  They  were  all  written 
in  the  generation  which  followed  the  death  of  St.  Paul, 
and  what  we  see  in  them,  speaking  broadly,  is  Jesus  as 
He  was  apprehended  by  the  Church  of  those  early  days. 
The  Jesus  whom  we  see  here  is  the  Jesus  on  which  the 
Christian  community  over  all  the  world  depended  for 
its  being.  As  far  as  He  lived  at  all  for  the  early  Cath- 
olic Church  he  lived  in  the  character  in  which  He  is 
here  exhibited.  In  other  words,  He  lived  not  as  another 
good  man,  however  distinguished  his  goodness  might  be, 
but  as  one  who  confronted  men  in  the  saving  power, 
and  therefore  in  the  truth  and  reality  of  God.  Whether 
the  words  in  Luke  24  b2  are  genuine  or  not,  the  fact  re- 
mains that  at  no  date  can  we  find  any  trace  of  a  Church 
which  did  not  worship  Him. 


VIII 

CHRIST  IN  THE  JOHANNINE  WRITINGS 

The  New  Testament  writings  which  bear  the  name 
of  John  are  certainly  connected  somehow,  though  how  it 
is  not  easy  to  determine.  It  is  not  so  long  ago  since 
the  Apocalypse  and  the  Fourth  Gospel  were  regarded 
as  the  opposite  extremes  of  early  Christianity,  represent- 
ative of  modes  of  thought  and  feeling  so  remote  and 
antagonistic  as  to  be  virtually  exclusive  of  each  other; 
but  deeper  study  has  brought  them  in  some  respects  into 
closer  mutual  relation  than  any  books  of  the  New  Tes- 


A 


CHRISTIANITY  OF  THE  APOCALYPSE     65 

tament.  In  both  there  is  the  same  passionate  uncom- 
promising temper,  the  same  sense  of  the  absolute 
distinction  between  that  which  is  and  that  which  is  not 
Christian.  In  the  Apocalypse  it  is  manifested  on  the 
field  of  history  and  of  conduct;  there  is  war  without 
truce  and  without  quarter  between  the  followers  of  the 
Lamb  and  those  of  the  beast,  and  the  supreme,  we  might 
almost  say  the  sole,  Christian  virtue  is  fidelity  unto  death. 
In  the  gospel  it  sometimes  seems  to  be  put  more  ab- 
stractly; it  is  exhibited  in  the  antitheses  of  light  and 
darkness,  life  and  death,  love  and  hatred.  These  an- 
titheses, however,  are  absolute,  and  they  centre  round 
Christ.  He  who  has  the  Son  has  life;  he  who  has  not 
the  Son  has  not  the  life.  He  who  believes  on  the  Son 
is  not  condemned;  he  who  believes  not  is  condemned 
already,  because  he  has  not  believed  on  the  name  of  the 
only  begotten  Son  of  God.  In  spite,  however,  of  the 
fundamental  affinity  of  these  writings  in  temper,  it  will 
be  convenient  to  examine  them  apart  and  to  see  in  each 
in  turn  the  significance  of  Christ  for  the  writer's  faith. 

(a)  The  Apocalypse 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  the  Apocalypse  might  be 
called  the  most  Christian  book  in  the  New  Testament. 
Written  at  a  time  of  persecution  and  conflict,  every 
feeling  in  it  is  strained  and  intense;  there  is  a  passion 
in  all  it  asserts  of  Christ,  and  in  all  its  longings  for  Christ, 
which  can  hardly  be  paralleled  elsewhere.  If  what 
we  had  to  do  was  to  reconstruct  the  Christology  of  the 
writer  we  might  have  a  difficult  task.  His  picture  of 
Jesus  has  features  which  seem  to  come  from  the  most 
various  sources — Jewish  Messianic  expectations,  resting 
on  the  book  of  Daniel  or  apocalyptic  books  of  the  same 
kind;  the  earthly  life  and  the  passion  of  Jesus;  the  epis- 
5 


66  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

ties  of  Paul,  and  possibly  even  the  Jewish  speculation 
of  Alexandria.  Bousset  refers  only  to  one  part  of  the 
book — the  epistles  to  the  seven  churches — but  his  words 
hold  good  of  the  whole  when  he  writes:  'What  we  have 
here  is  a  layman's  faith,  undisturbed  by  any  theological 
reflexion,  a  faith  which,  with  untroubled  naivete,  simply 
identifies  Christ  in  His  predicates  and  attributes  with 
God,  and  on  the  other  hand  also  calmly  takes  over  quite 
archaic  elements.' x  It  is  the  writer's  faith  in  Christ  we 
wish  to  define,  and  the  absence  of  theology  should  make 
our  task  the  easier. 

The  book  is  described  as  the  revelation  of  Jesus  Christ 
which  God  gave  to  Him.  The  subordination  of  Jesus 
Christ  to  God  is  assumed,  but  Jesus  Christ  is  for  the 
Church  the  source  and  in  some  sense  also  the  subject 
of  all  that  is  revealed.  This  is  part  at  least  of  what  is 
meant  in  19  10:  the  testimony  of  Jesus  is  the  spirit  of 
prophecy.  The  inspired  voices  which  are  heard  in  the 
Christian  community  are  moved  by  Him  and  bear  wit- 
ness to  Him.  But  passing  from  this  point,  we  find  at 
once  the  fullest  revelation  of  the  seer's  faith  in  Christ  in 
what  may  be  called  his  covering  letter,  enclosing  the 
epistles  of  cc.  2  and  3:  'John,  to  the  seven  churches 
that  are  in  Asia:  Grace  to  you  and  peace,  from  him 
which  is  and  which  was  and  which  is  to  come;  and  from 
the  seven  Spirits  which  are  before  his  throne;  and  from 
Jesus  Christ,  who  is  the  faithful  Witness,  the  firstborn  of 
the  dead,  and  the  ruler  of  the  kings  of  the  earth.  Unto 
him  that  loveth  us,  and  loosed  us  from  our  sins  by  his 
blood;  and  he  made  us  to  be  a  kingdom,  to  be  priests 
unto  his  God  and  Father;  to  him  be  the  glory  and  the 
dominion  for  ever  and  ever.  Amen.  Behold,  he  cometh 
with  the  clouds;  and  every  eye  shall  see  him,  and  they 
which  pierced  him;  and  all  the  tribes  of  the  earth  shall 

1  Die  Offenbartcng  Johannis,  280. 


CHRISTIANITY  OF  THE  APOCALYPSE     67 

mourn  over  Him.  Even  so,  Amen.'  What  first  strikes 
us  here,  as  it  has  so  often  done  already,  is  the  co-ordi- 
nation of  Jesus  Christ  with  God  and  His  Spirit.  We 
may  say  'His  Spirit'  quite  freely;  for  whatever  may  be 
the  genealogy  of  the  expression,  'the  seven  spirits  which 
are  before  His  throne' — and  it  can  hardly  be  questioned 
that  it  is  connected  with  the  Persian  Amshaspands — the 
seven  spirits  are  never  separated  in  the  Apocalypse;  they 
have  not,  as  in  the  Persian  mythology,  proper  names; 
they  are  treated  as  a  unity  in  which  the  fulness  of  the 
divine  power  is  gathered  up.  The  eternal  God,  the 
Spirit  in  its  plenitude,  and  Jesus  Christ:  this  is  the 
sum  of  the  divine  reality  from  which  grace  and  peace 
come  to  the  churches.  No  one  has  in  his  mind  all  that 
a  Christian  means  when  he  says  God  unless  he  has  in 
his  mind  all  that  is  covered  in  these  three  names.  For 
the  writer  of  the  Apocalypse,  and  for  the  faith  by  which 
he  lives,  Jesus  Christ  belongs  to  the  sphere  of  the  divine. 
After  naming  Jesus  he  proceeds  to  describe  Him  as  'the 
faithful  witness,  the  firstborn  of  the  dead,  the  ruler  of  the 
kings  of  the  earth.'  Possibly  all  these  words  describe 
Jesus  in  His  exaltation:  He  is  the  faithful  witness  as 
bearing  from  heaven  that  true  testimony  to  God  (or  to 
Himself)  by  which,  as  we  have  seen,  the  prophets  of  the 
Christian  Church  are  inspired.  But  in  the  doxology 
which  follows  there  is  more  than  this.  The  writer  turns 
from  the  exaltation  of  Jesus  to  His  passion,  and  it  is  the 
passion,  in  its  motive  and  its  fruits,  which  inspires  his 
praise.  'Unto  Him  that  loveth  us,  and  loosed  us  from 
our  sins  in  His  blood  ...  be  the  glory  and  the  dominion 
for  ever  and  ever.'  Nothing  could  be  conceived  in  wor- 
ship more  intense,  more  passionate  and  unreserved, 
than  this:  it  gives  to  Jesus  Christ,  with  irrepressible 
abandonment,  the  utmost  that  the  soul  can  ever  give  to 
God.     This  is  not  theology,  but  worship,  and  it  is  here 


68  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

the  interest  lies.  It  is  not  orthodoxy,  it  is  living  faith, 
and  it  shows  us  the  place  of  Christ  in  the  religion  of 
John  and  of  those  to  whom  he  wrote.  And  the  Church 
not  only  owes  to  Jesus  the  wonderful  emancipation  and 
exaltation  here  described — the  liberation  from  sin  and 
the  kingly  and  priestly  dignity — it  owes  to  Him  also 
everything  for  which  it  still  hopes.  'Behold,  He  cometh 
with  the  clouds.'  What  His  coming  means  it  takes  the 
the  whole  book  to  tell,  but  it  so  includes  every  Christian 
hope  that  all  Christian  prayers  can  be  briefly  compre- 
hended in  the  words,  'Come,  Lord  Jesus'  (22  20). 

The  vision  of  the  Son  of  Man  in  ch.  1 12  ff  is  remark- 
able as  applying  to  Jesus  several  of  the  features  which  in 
Daniel  7,  on  which  it  is  based,  belong  to  the  Ancient  of 
Days;  but  what  is  most  remarkable  in  it  is  the  assump- 
tion of  divine  attributes  by  the  Risen  Lord  Himself.  'I 
am  the  first  and  the  last  and  the  living  one,  and  I  became 
dead,  and  behold  I  am  alive  for  ever  and  ever,  and  have 
the  keys  of  death  and  of  Hades.'  This  is  not  the  lan- 
guage of  the  first  of  the  saints,  but  of  one  whose  relation 
to  believers  is  quite  disparate  from  any  relation  they  can 
ever  bear  to  each  other.  What  gives  it  impressiveness, 
too,  is  the  fact  that  it  is  no  mere  theologoumenon,  no 
piece  of  speculative  doctrine  which  has  been  artificially 
produced  and  is  without  practical  consequence;  the 
divine  significance  of  Jesus  which  is  exhibited  in  it  is 
applied  with  heart-searching  power,  in  the  seven  epistles, 
to  everything  in  the  moral  life  of  the  Church.  Addressed 
as  they  are  to  local  communities,  and  dealing  with  local 
conditions,  these  epistles  are  almost  as  directly  as  the  cen- 
tral chapters  of  the  fourth  gospel  a  testimony  of  Jesus 
to  Himself.  They  are  concerned  throughout  with  Him, 
and  with  His  relations  to  the  churches,  and  His  inter- 
est in  them.  It  is  worth  while  to  read  them  thinking 
only  of  the  Speaker,  or  noticing  only  what  is  said  in 


CHRISTIANITY  OF  THE  APOCALYPSE     69 

the  first  person.  '  I  know  thy  works.  Thou  hast  patience 
and  didst  endure  for  My  name's  sake.  I  have  it  against 
thee  that  thou  hast  left  thy  first  love.  I  will  remove 
thy  candlestick  out  of  its  place  unless  thou  repent.  Thou 
hatest  .  .  .  what  I  also  hate.  To  him  that  overcometh 
will  I  give  to  eat  of  the  tree  of  life.  .  .  .  These  things 
saith  the  First  and  the  Last  ...  Be  thou  faithful  unto 
death,  and  I  will  give  thee  the  crown  of  life.  .  .  . 
These  things  saith  He  that  hath  the  sharp  two-edged 
sword.  .  .  .  Thou  holdest  fast  My  name  and  didst  not 
deny  My  faith  even  in  the  days  when  Antipas,  My  wit- 
ness, My  faithful  one,  was  slain  among  you.  ...  To 
him  that  overcometh  will  I  give  of  the  hidden  manna. 
.  .  .  These  things  saith  the  Son  of  God,  who  hath 
His  eyes  as  a  flame  of  fire.  ...  I  know  thy  works  .  .  . 
but  I  have  against  thee.  ...  All  the  churches  shall 
know  that  I  am  He  that  searcheth  reins  and  hearts  and 
shall  give  you  each  according  to  your  works.  .  .  .  What 
ye  have  hold  fast  until  I  come.  And  he  that  overcom- 
eth and  keepeth  My  works  unto  the  end,  I  will  give 
him  authority  over  the  nations.  .  .  .  These  things 
saith  He  that  hath  the  seven  spirits  of  God.  ...  I 
know  thy  works.  ...  I  have  found  no  works  of  thine 
fulfilled  before  My  God.  .  .  .  Thou  hast  a  few  names  in 
Sardis  that  have  not  defiled  their  garments,  and  they 
shall  walk  with  me  in  white,  for  they  are  worthy.  He 
that  overcometh  shall  be  clothed  thus  in  white  garments, 
and  I  will  not  blot  out  his  name  out  of  the  book  of  life, 
and  I  will  confess  his  name  before  My  Father  and  before 
His  angels.  .  .  .  These  things  saith  He  that  is  holy,  He 
that  is  true.  .  .  .  Thou  hast  kept  My  word  and  hast  not 
denied  My  name.  I  will  make  them  know  that  I  have 
loved  thee.  Thou  hast  kept  the  word  of  My  patience, 
and  I  will  keep  thee  from  the  hour  of  temptation.  He 
that  overcometh,  I  will  make  him  a  pillar  in  the  Temple 


7o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

of  My  God,  and  he  shall  go  no  more  out,  and  I  will 
write  upon  him  the  name  of  My  God,  and  the  name  of 
the  city  of  My  God,  the  new  Jerusalem,  and  My  new 
name.  .  .  .  These  things  saith  the  Amen,  the  faithful 
and  true  witness,  the  beginning  of  the  creation  of  God. 
I  know  thy  works.  Thou  art  wretched  and  miserable 
and  poor  and  blind  and  naked.  I  counsel  thee  to  buy  of 
Me.  As  many  as  I  love,  I  rebuke  and  chasten.  Behold, 
I  stand  at  the  door  and  knock.  If  any  one  hear  My 
voice  and  open  the  door,  I  will  come  into  him  and  will 
sup  with  him  and  he  with  Me.  He  that  overcometh,  I 
will  give  to  him  to  sit  down  with  Me  on  My  throne,  even 
as  I  overcame  and  sat  down  with  My  Father  on  His 
throne.'  .  .  .  For  the  practical  comprehension  of  the 
place  of  Jesus,  not  in  the  creed  or  the  theology,  but  in 
the  faith  and  life  of  primitive  Christianity,  these  extracts 
from  the  epistles  to  the  seven  churches  are  priceless.  It 
does  not  matter  what  the  speculative  Christology  of  the 
writer  was,  or  whether  he  had  any  such  thing;  it  does 
not  matter,  in  phrases  like  'the  beginning  of  the  creation 
of  God'  (314),  and  'the  word  of  God'  (19  13),  whether 
we  are  or  are  not  to  trace  the  influence  of  Paul  or  of  the 
Alexandrian  philosophers:  here  we  are  in  contact  with 
the  living  soul  of  Christianity,  and  however  He  may  have 
been  conceived  we  see  what  Christ  vitally  and  prac- 
tically meant  for  it.  In  any  meaning  we  can  attach  to 
the  term,  His  significance  for  it  was  divine.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  convey  any  idea  of  it  if  we  think  of  Jesus  as  re- 
lated to  the  Church  and  its  members  merely  in  the  way 
in  which  they  are  related  to  each  other.  The  whole 
conception  is  the  more  remarkable  in  the  Apocalypse 
because  the  writer  shows  himself  peculiarly  sensitive 
about  worship  being  offered  to  angels,  superhuman 
though  they  are  (19 10,  22  9),  and  because  the  idea  of 
apotheosis,   or   the  bestowing   of   divine   honours   on   a 


CHRISTIANITY  OF  JOHN'S   EPISTLES      71 

human  being,  is,  as  his  attitude  to  Caesar  worship  shows, 
one  which  he  regards  with  the  utmost  horror.  The 
adoration  of  the  Lamb,  an  adoration  in  which  not  only 
those  who  are  redeemed  to  God  by  His  blood  partici- 
pate, but  every  creature  in  heaven  and  earth  and  under 
the  earth,  is  in  keeping  with  the  divine  significance  He 
has  for  Christian  souls.  If  He  sometimes  stands  between 
the  throne  and  the  Redeemed,  as  their  representative 
with  God,  at  others  He  is  on  the  throne,  as  God's  om- 
nipotent love  ruling  all  things  on  their  behalf.  The 
throne  itself  is  the  throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb,  and 
it  is  the  glory  of  those  who  partake  in  the  first  resurrec- 
tion that  they  become  priests  of  God  and  of  Christ  (20 6). 
If  we  add  to  this  that  the  sum  of  all  Christian  hope  is 
the  Coming  of  Christ,  and  that  with  His  final  advent  all 
things  are  made  new,  it  is  unnecessary  to  say  more.  The 
writer's  Christology  may  mingle  naively  archaic  elements 
like  the  lion  of  the  tribe  of  Judah,  or  the  iron  sceptre 
which  dashes  nations  in  pieces,  with  speculative  ideas 
like  the  first  principle  of  creation  or  the  eternal  divine 
word — it  matters  not.  What  his  work  reveals  is  that 
Jesus  is  practically  greater  than  any  or  all  these  ways 
of  representing  Him;  neither  the  imagination  of  the 
Jew  nor  the  philosophical  faculty  of  the  Greek  can  em- 
body Him;  in  the  faith  and  life  of  the  seer  He  has  an 
importance  to  which  neither  is  adequate;  the  only  true 
name  for  Him  is  one  which  is  above  every  name. 

(b)   The  Epistles  of  John 

It  is  convenient  to  take  the  epistles  of  John  before  the 
Gospel,  not  because  they  are  earlier  in  date,  which  is  im- 
probable, but  because  they  are  epistles,  and  we  can  see 
without  difficulty  the  place  which  Jesus  holds  in  the 
writer's  faith.     The  interest  of  these  documents  is  all  the 


72  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

greater  that  the  author  himself  is  deeply  concerned  to 
show  that  that  place  can  be  historically  justified. 

The  Christian  religion  has  to  do  with  what  he  calls 
eternal  life.  This  life  has  been  manifested,  and  has 
become  an  experience  and  a  possession  of  men.  The 
writer  himself  shares  in  it,  and  it  is  his  desire  and  the 
purpose  of  his  epistle  that  his  readers  should  share  in  it 
also.  'What  we  have  seen  and  heard  we  announce  to 
you  also,  that  you  also  may  have  fellowship  with  us: 'yea 
and  our  fellowship  is  with  the  Father  and  with  His  Son, 
Jesus  Christ'  (i.  i 3).  This  co-ordination  of  the  Son  with 
the  Father,  which  we  have  traced  in  all  the  New  Testa- 
ment writings  from  the  epistles  to  the  Thessalonians 
onward,  is  peculiarly  characteristic  of  the  epistles  of 
John.  The  Son  and  the  Father  are  terms  of  absolute 
significance;  there  is  only  one  Son  as  there  is  only  one 
Father,  and  the  salvation  of  men  depends  upon  a  rela- 
tion to  the  Son  and  the  Father  in  which  neither  can  be 
conceived  apart  from  the  other.  'God  has  given  to  us 
eternal  life,  and  this  life  is  in  His  Son.  He  who  has  the 
Son  has  the  life,  he  who  has  not  the  Son  of  God  has  not 
the  life'  (i.  5  u  ).  He  who  denies  the  Son  has  not  the 
Father  either,  but  he  who  confesses  the  Son  has  the 
Father  also  (1.  223).  The  perfect  Christian  life  is  that 
of  those  who  abide  in  the  Son  and  in  the  Father  (1.  2  24). 
'We  know  that  the  Son  of  God  is  come,  and  hath  given 
us  an  understanding  that  we  know  Him  that  is  true,  and 
we  are  in  Him  that  is  true,  even  in  His  Son  Jesus  Christ. 
This  is  the  true  God  and  eternal  life'  (1.  5  20).  This  is 
the  language  not  of  theology,  but  of  spiritual  experience, 
and  it  shows,  with  a  clearness  which  cannot  be  mistaken, 
the  place  which  Jesus  holds  in  the  religious  life  of  the 
apostle.  He  owes  to  Him  as  to  God,  or  he  owes  to 
God  in  and  through  Him  alone,  all  that  he  calls  truth 
and  life.     It  is  this  incomparable  significance  of  Christ, 


CHRISTIANITY  OF   JOHN'S  EPISTLES      73 

this  experimentally  ascertained  fact,  that  He  is  to  God 
what  no  other  is,  and  therefore  discharges  in  the  carry- 
ing out  of  God's  redeeming  work  functions  on  which  no 
other  can  intrude,  which  is  represented  when  He  is  des- 
ignated the  only-begotten  Son  (1.  4 9).  It  is  perhaps 
an  outcome  of  it  that  the  apostle  never  calls  Christians 
sons  of  God;  the  title  Son  is  reserved  for  the  Only-be- 
gotten, on  whom  all  are  dependent  for  their  knowledge 
of  the  Father;  the  other  members  of  the  family  are  not 
ulol  (sons)  to  John,  but  zixva  (children).  It  even  leads 
to  such  an  unparalleled  expression  as  we  find  in  the 
salutation  of  the  second  epistle:  Grace,  mercy,  peace 
shall  be  with  you  from  God  the  Father,  and  from  Jesus 
Christ  the  Son  of  the  Father,  in  truth  and  love. 

The  fellowship  with  the  Father  and  the  Son  in  which 
eternal  life  consists  is  maintained  by  walking  in  the 
light.  When  Christians  walk  in  the  light,  it  is  made 
evident  in  two  results:  first,  their  unity  is  maintained — 
they  have  fellowship  one  with  other;  second,  their  holi- 
ness is  promoted — the  blood  of  Jesus,  God's  son,  cleanses 
them  from  all  sin  (1.  1  7).  Sin  is  that  which  mars  fellow- 
ship with  God,  and  makes  it  impossible;  and  if  eternal 
life  can  only  be  realised  in  divine  fellowship,  then  the 
work  of  the  Son  of  God,  in  putting  such  fellowship 
within  our  reach,  must  be  in  its  very  essence  a  work 
related  to  sin.  This  may  be  said  without  exaggeration 
to  be  the  burden  of  the  first  epistle.  'My  little  children, 
these  things  write  I  unto  you  that  ye  may  not  sin.  And 
if  any  man  sin,  we  have  an  Advocate  with  the  Father, 
Jesus  Christ  the  Righteous;  and  He  is  the  propitiation 
for  our  sins,  and  not  for  ours  only,  but  also  for  the  whole 
world'  (1.  2lf).  'I  write  to  you,  little  children,  be- 
cause your  sins  have  been  forgiven  you  for  His  name's 
sake'  (1.  2  12).  These  two  ideas — the  eternal  life  into 
which  men  are  initiated  by  Christ;  and  the  propitiation 


74  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

for  sins  on  which  it  is  dependent — are  combined  in  the 
wonderful  passage  in  I.  49f,  where  both  are  inter- 
preted as  manifestations  of  the  love  of  God.  'In  this 
was  the  love  of  God  manifested  in  our  case,  that  God 
hath  sent  His  only-begotten  Son  into  the  world  that  we 
might  live  through  Him.  In  this  is  love,  not  that  we 
loved  God  but  that  He  loved  us,  and  sent  His  Son  a 
propitiation  for  our  sins.1  When  we  put  these  various 
utterances  together  we  see  the  universal  and  absolute 
significance  of  Jesus  in  the  faith  of  the  writer.  Jesus 
determines  everything  in  the  relations  of  God  and  man, 
not  only  eventually  or  once  for  all,  but  continuously; 
His  blood  cleanses,  in  the  present  tense:  if  any  man 
sin,  we  have  an  advocate  for  the  emergency;  Christians 
are  those  who  are  in  the  Son  (i.  2  5),  and  who  abide  in 
Him  (1.  26).  The  full  apostolic  testimony  is  that  the 
Father  has  sent  His  Son  as  Saviour  of  the  world  (1.  4  14). 
It  is  only  excessive  familiarity  which  can  deaden  our 
minds  to  assertions  so  stupendous.  There  is  nothing 
like  them  elsewhere  in  Scripture.  No  earlier  messen- 
ger of  God,  Moses,  Elijah,  or  Isaiah,  has  anything  analo 
gous  said  of  him.  The  conception  of  a  prophet  does 
not  help  us  in  the  very  least  to  appreciate  the  concep- 
tion of  the  only-begotten  Son,  who  is  the  Saviour  of 
the  world  because  He  is  the  propitiation  for  its  sins. 
He  cannot  be  understood  except  as  one  who  confronts 
men  in  the  truth,  love,  and  power  of  God — not  one  of 
ourselves,  to  whom  we  owe  no  more,  at  least  in  kind, 
than  we  owe  to  each  other;  but  one  through  whom, 
and  through  whom  alone,  God  enlightens,  redeems 
and  quickens  men.  The  idea  of  His  exaltation  is  not 
so  constantly  expressed  as  in  the  epistles  of  Paul,  but 
His  Parousia  or  manifestation  in  glory  is  expected,  and 
the  consummation  of  all  Christian  hopes  is  connected 
with  it.    The  believer  is  so  to  live  that  he  may  not  be 


CHRISTIANITY  OF   JOHN'S   EPISTLES      75 

ashamed  before  Him  at  His  coming  (1.  228),  nay,  that 
he  may  have  boldness  in  the  day  of  judgment  (1.  4  17) : 
we  know  that  if  He  shall  be  manifested  we  shall  be  like 
Him;  and  having  this  hope  set  upon  Him  we  must  purify 
ourselves  as  He  was  pure  (1.  3  2  f). 

And  yet,  side  by  side  with  this  presentation  of  Jesus, 
which  may  be  said  to  be  at  once  transcendent  and  ex- 
perimental, we  find  a  persistent  emphasis  laid  on  the 
reality  of  His  human  life.  The  epistle  is  a  testimony  to 
one  who  had  lived  as  man  among  men,  and  everything 
that  imperils  this  historical  basis  of  Christianity  imperils 
the  Christian  life  itself.  This  at  least  is  how  the  matter 
is  conceived  by  the  author.  He  is  the  only  New  Testa- 
ment writer  who  uses  the  term  antichrist;  and  the  anti- 
christ is  identified  by  him  with  the  denial  of  Jesus  Christ 
as  having  come  in  the  flesh  (1.  2  18"22,  4 3,  n.  verse  7). 
The  reference  in  these  passages  is  to  the  mode  of  thought 
which  is  usually  associated  with  the  name  of  Cerinthus. 
Cerinthus  distinguished  Jesus  from  the  Christ.1  The 
Christ  was  a  divine  being  who  descended  from  heaven 
and  was  associated  with  Jesus  from  His  baptism  on- 
ward; this  is  what  is  meant  by  coming  'through  the 
water.'  But  according  to  Cerinthus,  he  came  through 
the  water  only;  he  was  not  indissolubly  associated  with 
Jesus  so  as  to  pass  also  through  His  agony  and  death. 
He  did  not  come  in  the  water  and  in  the  blood.  This 
is  the  mode  of  thought  which,  to  the  writer,  is  'antichrist,' 
a  denial  of  the  essential  facts  on  which  Christianity  de- 
pends for  its  being.  For  him  the  only  Christ  is  Jesus;  the 
only  fatal  lie  is  that  which  declares  that  Jesus  is  not  the 
Christ  (1.  2  22).  He  has  what  might  almost  be  called  a 
dogmatic  test  for  'spirits'  speaking  in  the  Church:  every 
spirit  which  confesses  Jesus  Christ  as  come  in  the  flesh 
is  of  God,  and  every  spirit  that  does  not  confess  Jesus 

^renaeus,  Adv.  Haer.  i.  21. 


76  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

is  not  of  God  (i.  43).  The  one  victor  over  the  world 
is  he  who  believes  that  Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God,  the 
Jesus  who  came  in  the  water  and  in  the  blood,  and  whose 
whole  life  from  the  baptism  to  the  passion,  unquestioned 
in  its  historical  reality,  is  perpetuated  in  the  Church,  in 
its  spiritual  meaning  and  virtue,  in  the  Christian  sacra- 
ments— Baptism  answering  to  'the  water'  and  the  Supper 
to  the  'blood.'  *  What  has  been  already  said  about 
the  Son  as  standing  in  some  sort  of  co-ordination  with 
the  Father — about  His  confronting  men  as  the  Saviour 
of  the  world,  the  propitiation  for  all  sin,  the  sole  bearer 
of  eternal  life — is  not  to  be  put  into  any  kind  of  com- 
petition or  contrast  with  this;  in  the  mind  of  the  writer, 
the  Person  of  whom  these  extraordinary  things  are 
true  is  the  historical  person  who  was  baptized  by  John 
in  Jordan  and  who  hung  at  Calvary  on  the  Cross.  It  is 
the  historical  truth  and  reality  of  the  life  of  Jesus  on  which 
the  eternal  life  of  believers  is  dependent;  to  assail  or  under- 
mine the  one  is  to  threaten  the  other  at  its  foundation. 

The  Cerinthian  interpretation  of  Christianity  was  no 
doubt  derived  from  the  dualistic  philosophy  of  the  time; 
people  shrank  or  affected  to  shrink  from  the  idea  that  a 
spiritual  or  divine  nature  could  be  intimately  or  per- 
manently related  to  matter,  and  especially  from  the  idea 
that  it  could  pass  through  the  degrading  and  odious  squalor 
of  the  crucifixion.  Although  the  same  motives  do  not 
operate  now,  what  is  practically  the  same  result  is  often 
reached  under  another  impulse.  Men  are  attracted  by  the 
idea  that  the  Christian  religion  should  be  lifted  above  the 
region  in  which  historic  doubts  are  possible;  they  wish 
to  refine  it,  to  spiritualise  it,  to  make  it  an  affair  of  ideas 
to  which  any  given  historical  fact  is  immaterial.  It  is  as 
if  they  said,  All  these  things  are  true — but  they  are  true 
in  independence  of  Jesus.     There  are  such  realities  as 

'See  Expositor,  May,  1908.     Article  by  the  writer. 


CHRISTIANITY  OF  FOURTH   GOSPEL      77 

eternal  life,  divine  sonship,  forgiveness  of  sins — yes,  and 
even  propitiation  for  sins — but  they  are  realities  which 
belong  to  the  eternal  world;  they  have  their  being  in 
God,  and  Jesus  is  only  accidentally  related  to  them. 
Once  grasp  the  principle  of  Christianity,  and  Jesus,  like 
every  other  historical  person,  is  indifferent  to  it.  He 
has  no  place  in  the  gospel,  though  He  (and  no  other) 
may  have  been  the  occasion  of  these  eternal  truths  break- 
ing upon  one  or  another  mind.  All  that  has  to  be  said 
about  this  at  present  is  that  it  is  not  the  understand- 
ing of  the  writer  of  these  epistles.  It  is  a  mode  of  thought 
which  in  all  essentials  was  present  to  his  mind,  and 
which  he  deliberately  and  decisively  rejected.  It  was 
not  simply  incongruous  or  uncongenial,  it  was  fatal 
to  Christianity  as  he  understood  it.  For  it  is  impossible 
to  read  otherwise  than  literally  the  words  with  which  he 
introduces  himself  to  his  readers:  'That  which  was 
from  the  beginning,  which  we  have  heard,  which  we 
have  seen  with  our  eyes,  which  we  looked  upon  and 
our  hands  handled,  concerning  the  word  of  life — and 
the  life  was  manifested,  and  we  have  seen  and  bear 
witness  and  announce  to  you  the  eternal  life  which  was 
with  the  Father  and  was  manifested  unto  us — that  which 
we  have  seen  and  heard  we  announce  to  you  also,  that 
you  also  may  have  fellowship  with  us;  yea,  and  our 
fellowship  is  with  the  Father  and  with  His  Son  Jesus 
Christ'  (1.  1 1"3).  It  is  this  unity  of  the  historical  and  the  4 
eternal,  this  eternal  and  divine  _sjjmfficance.  of  the_Jhk=-  / 
toricaH  which  is  thevery  stampHandsealof  the  Christian  J 
religion. 

(c)  The  Gospel  according  to  John 

In  examining  the  synoptic  gospels  we  had  occasion 
to  remark  on  the  distinction  which  has  to  be  drawn  in 
them  between  the  testimony  of  the  evangelists  to  Jesus 


78  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

and  the  testimony  of  Jesus  to  Himself.  Though  the 
writers  of  these  gospels  would  not  have  drawn  such  a 
distinction  themselves,  and  did  their  work,  so  far  as  we 
can  see,  quite  unconscious  of  it,  it  is  necessary  that  we 
should  draw  it,  and  it  is  not  in  their  case  too  difficult  to 
apply  it.  The  difficulty  is  very  much  increased  and 
amounts  at  various  points  to  an  impossibility  when  we 
come  to  the  fourth  gospel.  There  is  only  one  style  in 
the  gospel  from  beginning  to  end,  and  every  one  speaks 
in  it— John  the  Baptist,  Jesus,  the  evangelist  himself. 
There  is  only  one  mode  of  thought  represented  in  it  from 
beginning  to  end,  and  every  one  shares  it — John  the 
Baptist,  Jesus,  the  evangelist  himself.  What  it  enables 
us  to  see  with  indubitable  clearness  is  the  place  which 
Jesus  holds  in  the  faith  and  life  of  the  writer;  what  we 
cannot  so  easily  recover  from  it  is  the  exact  relation  of 
this  place  to  that  which  Jesus  Himself  claimed.  It  is 
true  that  to  a  large  extent  the  writer's  testimony  to  Jesus 
is  given  through  Jesus'  life;  it  is  represented  as  the  very 
word  of  the  Lord  Himself.  But  the  critical  study  of  the 
gospel,  and  especially  the  comparison  of  it  with  the 
synoptics,  makes  it  doubtful  how  far  we  can  take  this 
literally.  It  is  the  preponderating  opinion  of  all  who  have 
investigated  the  subject  that  the  fourth  gospel  is  in  sub- 
stance the  fulfilment  of  the  words  of  Jesus  which  we  read 
in  c.  1 6  12:  'I  have  many  things  to  say  unto  you,  but  ye 
cannot  bear  them  now.  But  when  He  is  come,  the  Spirit 
of  truth,  He  shall  lead  you  into  all  the  truth  ...  He  shall 
glorify  Me,  for  He  shall  take  of  Mine  and  shall  declare  it 
unto  you.'  The  Jesus  who  speaks  in  its  pages,  though 
it  is  in  form  a  gospel,  and  follows  the  course  of  His  life 
on  earth,  is  not  only  the  Jesus  who  taught  in  the  syna- 
gogues and  fields  of  Galilee,  or  in  the  temple  courts  and 
streets  of  Jerusalem,  but  also  the  exalted  Lord  whose 
spirit  vivifies  and  interprets  the  memories  of  Jesus  in 


CHRISTIANITY  OF  FOURTH   GOSPEL      79 

the  heart  of  an  intimate,  devoted,  and  experienced  dis- 
ciple. The  words  of  Jesus  are  connected,  of  course, 
with  times  and  places,  for  they  are  given  as  part  of  a 
historical  career,  but  they  do  not  belong  to  time  or  place; 
they  are  the  expression  of  the  eternal  truth  which  was 
revealed  in  Jesus,  and  which  for  the  writer  is  identical 
with  Him.  They  are  the  word,  rather  than  the  words, 
of  the  Lord.  They  are  the  authentic  revelation  of  what 
He  is  and  was,  as  His  Spirit  has  interpreted  Him  to  the 
evangelist,  rather  than  the  ipsissima  verba  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth.  But  while  this  makes  it  more  difficult  to  use 
the  fourth  gospel  without  reflection  in  answering  the 
second  of  the  two  questions  with  which  we  are  concerned, 
it  gives  us  ampler  material  to  answer  the  first.  The  way 
in  which  Jesus  presents  Himself  in  the  gospel  can  gene- 
rally be  taken  as  embodying  the  evangelist's  own  sense 
of  his  place  and  significance  for  faith. 

Although  the  procedure  is  open  to  criticism,  we  uegin 
with  the  prologue.  The  immense  influence  which  these 
few  verses  have  had  in  determining  the  doctrine  of  the 
Catholic  Church,  and  the  tendency  of  a  once  dominant 
critical  school  to  interpret  them  in  a  purely  philosophical 
and  speculative  interest,  should  not  blind  us  to  their  essen- 
tially practical,  historical,  and,  it  may  even  be  added,  ex- 
perimental character.  The  main  propositions  they  con- 
tain are  those  of  vv.  14  and  16:  'The  word  was  made  flesh 
and  dwelt  among  us,  and  we  beheld  His  glory,  glory  as  of 
the  only  begotten  from  the  Father,  jull  oj  grace  and 
truth.  ...  0/  His  julness  we  all  received,  and  grace 
upon  grace.'  This  is  entirely  in  keeping  with  what  we 
have  found  in  the  first  epistle;  and  in  spite  of  the  attempts 
that  have  been  made  to  find  divergent  modes  of  thought 
in  the  two  documents  and  to  assign  them  to  different 
hands,  the  view  of  Lightfoot  still  seems  to  me  to  have 
everything  in  its  favour — viz.,  that  the  epistle  is  a  sort 


80  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

of  covering  letter  accompanying  and  recommending 
the  gospel.1  The  gospel  exhibits  Jesus  in  His  life  in 
the  flesh  in  precisely  that  significance  for  faith  which  He 
has  in  the  epistle.  There  is  the  same  insistence  on  the 
flesh,  on  the  historical  reality,  to  which  immediate  testi- 
mony is  borne;  there  is  the  same  emphasis  on  the  con- 
ception of  Christ  as  'Only-begotten/  one  who  gives 
others  the  right  to  become  children  of  God  (i 12),  but  has 
an  incomparable  sonship  of  His  own;  there  is  the  same 
sense  of  owing  everything  to  Him  (i 16).  There  is  not 
in  the  prologue  a  single  word  which  betrays  a  purely 
speculative  interest,  such  as  we  find,  for  example,  in 
Philo.  There  is  not  a  single  technical  term.  The  writer 
has  no  philosophical  problems  or  conundrums  for  the 
solving  of  which  he  makes  use  of  the  category  of  the 
Logos.  The  one  immeasurable  reality  which  fills  and 
holds  his  mind  is  Jesus.  Jesus  has  been  to  him  the 
Interpreter  of  God  (i 18) :  in  knowing  Him  he  has  known 
God  as  he  never  did  before;  in  seeing  Him  he  has  seen 
the  Father:  in  associating  with  Him  he  has  been  flooded 
as  it  were,  wave  upon  wave,  with  the  fulness  of  grace 
and  truth  which  dwelt  in  Him.  This  is  fundamental 
in  the  prologue  as  it  stands,  and  is  the  key  to  every- 
thing else  it  contains.  Possibly  we  understand  it  best 
by  comparing  it  with  the  other  gospels.  To  all  the  evan- 
gelists Jesus  is  a  great  person,  and  it  lies  on  them  some- 
how to  exhibit  and  explain  His  greatness.  Mark,  who 
is  the  earliest,  does  least.  He  connects  Jesus  with  John 
the  Baptist,  and  by  a  single  allusion  to  the  prophecies 
of  Isaiah  and  Malachi,  which  were  fulfilled  in  the  fore- 
runner, leaves  us  to  infer  that  in  Jesus  God's  ancient 
purposes  are  being  achieved.  Matthew  goes  further.  He 
introduces  Jesus  as  the  Christ,  son  of  David,  son  of 
Abraham.     He  is  the  key  to  the  whole  Jewish  history: 

1  Biblical  Essays,  63,  198. 


CHRISTIANITY  OF  FOURTH   GOSPEL      81 

the  one  true  religion,  beginning  with  the  father  of  the 
faithful,  has  its  consummation  in  Him.  Luke  goes 
further  still.  He  traces  the  genealogy  of  Jesus  not  to 
Abraham  but  to  Adam.  He  is  sensible  that  His  signifi- 
cance is  not  national  but  universal,  and  that  to  appreciate 
His  greatness  we  must  understand  His  essential  relation 
not  only  to  Israel  but  to  the  whole  human  race.  But  for 
John  none  of  these  ways  of  representing  the  greatness 
and  significance  of  Jesus  is  adequate.  To  exhibit  the 
truth  about  Him,  or  rather  to  exhibit  Him  in  the  truth  of 
His  being,  we  must  relate  Him  not  to  the  Baptist  merely, 
or  to  Abraham,  or  to  the  father  of  mankind,  but  to  the 
eternal  being  of  God.  This  is  what  the  writer  does  by 
means  of  the  Logos  idea,  and  it  is  for  this  purpose  alone 
that  he  makes  use  of  the  idea.  He  does  not  arbitrarily 
assign  to  Jesus  all  or  any  of  the  functions  assigned  to 
the  Logos  in  Heraclitus  and  the  Stoics,  or  in  the  Alex- 
andrian philosophy  of  Philo;  in  such  things  he  has  less 
than  no  interest.  His  heart  is  where  his  treasure  is, 
with  Jesus.  In  coming  into  contact  with  Jesus  he  has 
come  into  contact  with  the  eternal  truth  and  love  of  God; 
the  final  and  all-sufficient  revelation  of  Him  whom  no 
man  has  seen  has  been  made  in  the  Only-begotten. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  universe — nothing  in  nature,  in 
history,  in  all  that  has  ever  been  known  as  religion  or 
revelation — that  can  truly  be  understood  except  in  this 
light  (vv.  1-12).  The  world,  as  it  has  been  put  before, 
is  a  Christian  world,  and  we  do  not  understand  it  finally 
till  everything  in  it  has  been  set  into  relation  to  Christ. 
To  set  everything  into  relation  to  Christ,  under  this  pro- 
found sense  of  His  universal  significance,  is  the  purpose 
of  the  writer  in  the  opening  verses  of  his  gospel.  He 
does  so  in  bold  outlines,  in  a  few  brief  sentences;  and  he 
borrows  the  conception  of  the  Logos  for  a  moment,  be- 
cause in  the  environment  for  which  he  wrote  it  facilitated 
6 


,»S     82  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 


■>\ 


the  execution  of  his  purpose.  But  though  he  borrows  the 
conception,  he  does  not  borrow  from  it.  He  does  not 
invest  Jesus  with  an  unreal  greatness  which  belongs  to 
this  philosophical  conception  and  not  to  the  Person. 
Jesus  is  too  great  for  this,  and  too  real;  the  writer  knows 
Him  too  well,  and  his  devotion  to  Him  is  too  absolute; 
as  the  gospel  itself  will  show,  he  can  say  everything  he 
has  to  say  about  Jesus  without  so  much  as  using  the 
term;  and  the  interest  of  the  prologue  for  our  present 
purpose  is  that  it  puts  at  the  very  outset,  though  in  a  form 
that  has  created  some  misapprehension,  his  sense  of  the 
divine,  eternal,  and  universal  significance  of  Jesus.  At 
the  risk  of  being  tiresome,  it  may  be  said  once  more  that 
he  did  not  borrow  this  from  the  Logos;  he  borrowed  the 
Logos,  because  it  lent  itself  to  the  convenient  and  intelli- 
gible expression  of  this  independent  Christian  conviction. 
The  value  of  the  Logos  doctrine  for  a  Christian  is  that 
it  can  be  used  in  this  way,  and  if  it  ceased  to  be  as  con- 
venient or  as  intelligible  to  modern  readers  as  it  was  to 
Christians  of  Asia  Minor  when  the  gospel  was  published, 
its  value  would  be  gone. 

When  we  pass  from  the  prologue  to  the  body  of  the  gos- 
pel, we  are  practically  in  the  same  world  of  thought 
and  experience  which  we  know  already  from  the  first 
epistle.  The  writer  himself  tells  us  formally  the  purpose 
of  his  work.  'These  things  are  written  that  ye  may 
believe  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  and  that 
believing  ye  may  have  life  in  His  name'  (ch.  20  31).  The 
ultimate  aim  of  the  evangelist  here  is  the  same  with  that 
which  we  find  on  the  lips  of  Jesus  Himself  in  c.  10  10 :  '  I 
am  come  that  they  might  have  life' ;  and  in  more  solemn 
and  formal  terms  in  ch.  i72f>:  'Thou  hast  given  Him 
power  over  all  flesh,  that  all  which  Thou  hast  given  Him 
He  may  give  unto  them  eternal  life.  And  this  is  life  eter- 
nal, that  the}  should  know  Thee,  the  only  true  God,  and 


CHRISTIANITY  OF  FOURTH   GOSPEL      83 

Him  whom  Thou  didst  send,  even  Jesus  Christ.'  In  view 
of  these  passages  and  others  like  them  which  occur  on 
every  page,  it  is  hardly  worth  while  investigating  the 
titles  by  which  the  evangelist  or  those  who  figure  in  his 
pages  represent  to  themselves  the  significance  of  Jesus — 
the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  the  King  of  Israel,  the  Son 
of  Man.  The  Person  to  whom  men  owe  eternal  life  is  a 
Person  to  whom  no  previously  defined  name  is  adequate; 
whatever  term  we  apply  to  Him  is  transfigured  by  the 
very  application;  in  contact  with  Him  it  fills  with  a 
meaning  which  it  never  had  before.  A  remarkable 
proof  of  this  is  the  way  in  which  Jesus  uses  of  Himself  in 
the  gospel  the  expression  lyw  elfxi,  'I  am,'  without  any 
definite  predicate.  'If  ye  do  not  believe  that  I  am,  ye 
shall  die  in  your  sins'  (824).  'When  ye  have  lifted  up 
the  Son  of  Man,  then  shall  ye  know  that  I  am'  (8  3"). 
'  Henceforth  I  tell  you  before  it  come  to  pass,  that  ye  may 
believe  when  it  has  come  to  pass,  that  I  am'  (13  19).  'The 
only  appropriate  supplement  in  such  passages  is  'the 
all  decisive  personality,' 1  by  relation  to  whom  every- 
thing in  human  destiny  is  determined.  Jesus  is  what  He 
is;  no  one  can  reduce  this  to  a  finite  formula,  but  every-  \> 
thing  that  we  mean  by  eternal  life  is  dependent  upon  it. 
Sometimes  the  emphasis  in  exhibiting  what  He  is  falls 
upon  His  relation  to  God.  To  know  the  only  true  God, 
and  Him  whom  He  sent,  Jesus  Christ,  is  one  (17  3).  He 
who  has  seen  Jesus  has  seen  the  Father,  and  there  is  no 
other  way  to  see  Him.  He  is  in  the  Father  and  the 
Father  in  Him  (14  9f>);  I  and  the  Father,  He  says,  are 
one.  'One'  is  neuter,  not  masculine:  Jesus  and  the 
Father  constitute  one  power,  by  which  the  salvation  of 
man  is  secured;  He  gives  his  sheep  eternal  life,  and  no 
power  can  pluck  them  out  of  His  hand,  because  no 
power  can  pluck  anything  from  the  Father's  hand,  with 

'Holtzmann,  Handcommentar,  iv.  131. 


84  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

whom,  to  this  intent,  Jesus  is  identified  (ioso).  Jesus  is 
the  only-begotten  Son,  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father  (i 18, 
3  16) ;  He  quickens  whom  He  will,  and  has  all  judg- 
ment committed  to  Him,  that  all  men  may  honour  the 
Son  even  as  they  honour  the  Father  (5  21  ff ) .  A  person 
so  related  to  God  is  manifestly  incommensurable  with 
others;  he  is  not  conceived  as  the  author  of  the  gospel 
conceived  him,  he  has  not  the  place  in  our  faith  which 
he  had  in  his,  if  he  can  be  classified  with  even  the  great- 
est and  most  spiritual  men.  In  some  peculiar  way 
he  belongs  to  that  side  or  aspect  of  reality  which  we  call 
divine;  he  does  not  stand  with  us  in  the  Christian  reli- 
gion, sharing  our  worship  and  our  needs,  offering  on  his 
own  behalf  the  prayers  we  offer  on  ours;  he  confronts 
us  in  the  life,  power,  and  grace  of  God. 

This  absolute  significance  of  Jesus  for  religion  is  vividly 
emphasised  not  only  in  His  relation  to  God,  but  also  in 
all  His  intercourse  with  men  in  the  gospel.  His  relation 
to  them  is  as  incomparable  as  His  relation  to  His  Father. 
He  is  always  a  problem,  but  He  is  always  suggesting  to 
those  around  Him  solutions  of  the  problem  which  all  the 
world  can  understand,  and  in  which  all  the  world  is 
interested.  Who  is  this?  the  Jews  ask.  Is  it  the  Christ? 
How  shall  we  tell  whether  He  is  the  Christ  or  not  ?  When 
the  Christ  comes,  He  is  to  come  mysteriously:  no  one 
is  to  know  whence  He  is;  but  do  we  not  know  all  about 
this  man's  origin?  The  Christ  is  to  come  from  Beth- 
lehem; but  is  not  this  man  a  Galilean?  The  Christ 
is  to  renew  the  miracles  of  the  Exodus  and  the  wil- 
derness; this  man  has  done  signs  unquestionably,  but  are 
they  signal  enough  to  attest  Him  as  the  Messiah?  As 
against  this  feeble  professional  criticism,  which  what- 
ever else  may  be  said  of  it  must  always  be  the  affair  of 
a  few,  Jesus  offers  Himself  to  the  universal  needs  of 
men.     'I  am  the  bread  of  life.'     'If  any  man  thirst,  let 


CHRISTIANITY   OF  FOURTH   GOSPEL      85 

him  come  unto  me  and  drink.'  'I  am  the  light  of  the 
world.'  'I  am  the  door/  'I  am  the  good  shepherd.' 
'I  am  resurrection  and  life.'  'I  am  the  way,  the  truth, 
and  the  life.'  These  are  not  words  which  it  requires 
theological  science  to  understand;  they  can  only  be 
interpreted  by  human  need,  but  that  secures  that  they 
can  be  understood  by  all.  Whoever  knows  what  it  is  to 
be  hungry  or  thirsty,  to  be  in  the  dark,  to  be  outside,  to 
be  forlorn,  wandered,  dead,  may  know  Jesus.  This  is 
the  one  thing  of  which  the  evangelist  is  sure,  that  there 
is  no  human  need,  not  even  the  profoundest,  which  He 
cannot  meet:  of  His  fulness  all  may  receive,  and  grace 
upon  grace.  In  this  adequacy  to  all  the  spiritual  needs 
of  the  human  race  Jesus  stands  as  completely  alone  as 
He  does  in  His  unique  relation  to  the  Father.  The 
Saviour  of  the  World  (3  17,  4  42,  12  47)  can  no  more  be 
conceived  to  have  a  rival  or  a  partner  than  the  only- 
begotten  Son  of  God. 

In  examining  the  first  epistle  we  saw  that  in  the  faith 
of  the  writer  the  eternal  life  which  came  through  Christ 
was  dependent  upon  His  being  a  propitiation  for  sins. 
When  he  thinks  of  Jesus  as  Saviour,  it  is  inevitably  in 
this  character  that  he  conceives  Him.  The  view  taken  in 
the  gospel,  it  is  sometimes  alleged,  is  quite  different. 
Here,  it  is  said,  there  is  no  allusion  to  propitiation;  the 
category  which  rules  the  author's  thoughts  is  that  of 
revelation,  not  that  of  atonement.  Christ  brings  eternal 
life  by  making  known  the  Father,  and  that  is  all.  But 
such  an  interpretation  of  the  gospel  is  misleading  and 
superficial.  There  is  of  course  a  difference  between  a 
gospel  and  an  epistle  in  every  case;  the  emphasis  in 
them  will  necessarily  fall  upon  different  points.  But  the 
fourth  gospel,  as  we  have  already  seen,  has  more  of  the 
character  of  an  epistle  than  the  other  three;  it  is  not  such 
an  immediate  reflection  of  historical  fact;  the  historical 


86  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

fact  is  interpreted  and  illumined  in  it  by  the  faith  and 
experience  of  the  writer,  and  as  he  himself  tells  us,  by  the 
teaching  of  the  Spirit ;  and  unless  we  could  say  beforehand 
that  he  was  a  different  man  from  the  author  of  the  epistle 
— a  proposition  which  has  all  evidence  and  probability 
against  it — the  presumption  must  be  that  on  a  question 
so  vital  the  two  books  will  be  at  one.  This  is  in  point 
of  fact  the  conclusion  to  which  we  are  led  by  an  im- 
partial examination  of  the  gospel  itself.  It  is  a  book 
of  testimony  to  Jesus,  and  what  is  the  first  testimony 
it  presents?  It  is  that  of  the  Baptist  in  i 29 — 'Behold 
the  Lamb  of  God,  which  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the 
world.'  If  any  one  believes  that  the  Baptist  here  is 
only  the  vehicle  for  the  faith  of  the  evangelist,  the  argu- 
ment is  unaffected:  a  lamb  by  which  sin  is  taken  away 
is  nothing  but  a  sacrificial  lamb,  and  the  expression 
covers  precisely  the  same  spiritual  debt  to  Christ  and 
dependence  upon  Him  as  is  covered  by  ttaafios,  or  pro- 
pitiation, in  the  epistle  (2  2,  410).  Again,  at  the  close 
of  the  gospel,  in  the  Johannine  parallel  to  the  apostolic 
commission  in  Matthew  and  Luke,  we  read:  'He  breathed 
on  them  and  said,  Receive  the  Holy  Spirit;  whose  so- 
ever sins  ye  forgive,  they  are  forgiven  unto  them;  whose 
soever  sins  ye  retain,  they  are  retained'  (20 23).  Clearly 
for  the  evangelist  the  forgiveness  of  sins  lies  at  the  heart 
of  the  gospel  with  which  the  disciples  were  entrusted  as 
representatives  of  Jesus,  and  like  everything  else  in  the 
gospel  it  must  be  due  to  Him. 

But  not  only  is  this  the  case,  it  may  be  further  shown 
that  the  particular  way  in  which  forgiveness  is  conceived 
as  due  to  Jesus  is  the  same  in  the  gospel  as  in  the  epis- 
tle. Sometimes  this  comes  out  quite  incidentally,  and 
apart  from  any  intention  of  the  author.  It  is  enough 
to  recall,  in  illustration,  his  comment  on  the  counsel 
of  Caiaphas:    'You  do  not  consider  that  it  is  for  your 


CHRISTIANITY  OF  FOURTH   GOSPEL      87 

interest  that  one  man  should  die  for  the  nation,  and 
not  the  whole  nation  perish'  (11 50).  This,  the  evan- 
gelist adds,  he  said  not  of  himself,  but  being  high  priest 
that  year  he  prophesied  that  Jesus  should  die  for  the 
nation,  and  not  for  the  nation  only  but  also  that  He 
might  gather  together  in  one  the  dispersed  children 
of  God.  Such  a  reflection  on  the  brutal  or  cynical  policy 
of  the  high  priest  could  never  have  occurred  to  any 
one  unless  it  had  been  divinely  true  for  him  that  the 
death  of  Jesus  was  the  life  of  the  world.  Nay,  unless 
this  had  been  an  element  of  the  truth  in  which  as  a  re- 
ligious man  he  lived  and  moved  and  had  his  being,  so 
that  it  was  always  present  to  him  without  deliberate 
reflection,  it  is  impossible  to  see  how  his  comment  on 
Caiaphas  should  have  originated.  But  this  is  only 
another  way  of  saying  that  the  death  of  Jesus  has  in  the 
gospel  the  same  place  in  the  writer's  faith  as  it  has  in 
the  epistle. 

As  illustrations  of  the  significance  which  he  assigns 
it  in  a  more  conscious  fashion  we  may  refer  to  the  great 
sacramental  discourses  in  the  third  and  sixth  chapters, 
and  to  the  emphatic  words  about  the  water  and  the 
blood  in  19  34.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  last  are  to 
be  interpreted  in  the  same  sense  as  the  corresponding 
words,  which  have  a  similar  and  at  the  first  glance  a 
puzzling  emphasis,  in  the  epistle  (56:  see  above,  p.  76). 
There  is  a  reference  in  both  places  to  the  Christian  sacra- 
ments of  Baptism  and  the  Supper  which  are  in  the  writer's 
thoughts  all  through  chapter  3  and  chapter  6.  If  we 
look  at  chapter  3  connectedly,  we  see  that  the  death  of 
Christ  comes  into  it  precisely  as  it  does  into  the  epistle — 
indeed,  precisely  as  it  does  into  the  epistle  to  the  Romans. 
Nicodemus  is  being  taught  that  we  must  be  born  again. 
The  necessity  of  the  new  birth  is  the  earthly  thing  which 
every  one  might  be  presumed  to  understand  out  of  his 


88  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

own  experience:  who  has  not  sighed  to  be  another  crea- 
ture than  he  is?  The  heavenly  thing  which  it  is  so 
hard  to  understand  that  the  speaker  may  well  despair  of 
finding  faith  for  it,  is  the  possibility  and  the  method  of 
the  new  birth.  No  one  can  explain  this  heavenly  thing 
but  Jesus,  and  he  does  it  in  two  sentences.  One  is  that 
in  which  he  describes  it  as  a  being  born  of  water  and  of 
the  spirit,  where  there  is  a  reference,  which  it  is  not 
possible  for  the  present  writer  to  question,  to  Chris- 
tian baptism  and  to  the  reception  of  the  spirit  which 
was  its  normal  accompaniment  in  the  apostolic  age. 
The  other  is  that  in  which  he  says,  'As  Moses  lifted 
up  the  serpent  in  the  wilderness,  even  so  must  the  Son 
of  Man  be  lifted  up,  that  whosoever  believeth  may  in 
Him  have  eternal  life.'  Apart  from  the  suggestion  of 
the  figure,  we  know  what  the  evangelist  meant  by  the 
lifting  up  of  the  Son  of  Man:  Jesus  used  this  word,  he 
tells  us  plainly  elsewhere  (12  33),  to  signify  by  what  death 
He  should  die.  Unless  we  are  prepared  to  accuse  the 
author  of  a  rambling  incoherence,  and  of  tumbling 
out  sentences  which  have  no  connexion  with  each  other 
and  could  never  find  an  intelligible  context  in  the  mind 
of  his  readers,  we  shall  remember  that  the  baptism  al- 
luded to  in  ver.  5  is  baptism  in  the  name  of  Jesus,  and 
specifically,  as  ver.  14  reminds  us,  in  the  name  of  Jesus 
who  died  for  us  upon  the  Cross.  It  is  baptism,  as  Paul 
expresses  it,  looking  to  His  death  (Rom.  63).  The 
new  birth  is  mysterious,  but  not  magical.  As  the  evan- 
gelist understood  it,  in  its  specifically  Christian  char- 
acter, it  is  normally  coincident  with  baptism;  it  is  an 
experience  which  comes  to  men  when  in  penitent  faith 
they  cast  themselves  upon  the  Son  of  God  uplifted  on 
the  Cross — in  other  words,  when  they  commit  them- 
selves to  the  love  which  in  the  Lamb  of  God  taketh 
away  the  sin  of  the  world  by  becoming  a  propitiation 


CHRISTIANITY  OF  FOURTH   GOSPEL      89 

for  it.  Apart  from  such  a  combination  of  ideas,  the 
discourse  with  Nicodemus  is  chaotic  and  unintelligible, 
and  the  mere  fact  that  it  is  thus  made  lucid  and  co- 
herent is  sufficient  to  vindicate  this  construction.  It 
secures  for  regeneration  a  genuinely  Christian  character 
by  making  it  depend  upon  the  death  of  Jesus,  and  it 
only  gives  to  that  death  in  this  passage  the  significance 
claimed  for  it  from  1 29  to  19  34. 

Mutatis  mutandis,  all  that  has  been  said  of  the  third 
chapter  in  John  may  be  said  of  the  sixth.  The  Supper 
is  in  the  author's  mind  in  the  one  as  Baptism  is  in  the 
other.  The  subject  is  Jesus  as  the  bread  of  life,  and  the 
burden  of  the  discourse  is  put  with  the  utmost  generality 
in  ver.  56:  'As  the  living  Father  sent  me  and  I  live  be- 
cause of  the  Father,  so  he  that  eateth  me,  he  shall 
live  because  of  me.'  But  the  evangelist  passes,  volun- 
tarily or  involuntarily,  into  the  liturgical  terminology 
of  the  sacrament  when  he  speaks  of  eating  the  flesh 
and  drinking  the  blood  of  the  Son  of  Man;  and  once  this 
is  recognised,  there  can  be  no  question  as  to  the  refer- 
ence of  such  words.  Their  reference  was  fixed  in  the 
Christian  community  before  this  gospel  was  written,  and 
they  connect  the  life  of  the  Christian  with  the  death  of 
Christ.  It  is  not  a  passing  idea  that  there  is  such  a 
connexion;  it  is  a  truth  embodied  in  a  rite  perpetually 
celebrated — a  truth,  therefore,  never  absent  from  the 
Christian  mind,  regarded  as  of  primary  and  vital  impor- 
tance, recurring  to  the  thoughts  spontaneously  on  the 
strangest  occasions  (11 49  ff) ,  asserted  with  the  most  solemn 
emphasis  (19  34,  653).  It  is  not  serious  criticism  which 
finds  in  the  fourth  gospel  a  Christ  whose  significance  for 
faith,  as  a  propitiation  for  sin,  is  other  than  that  which 
meets  us  in  the  first  epistle  of  John.  The  Lamb  of  God 
that  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the  world — the  Son  of  Man 
uplifted  on  the  Cross  as  Moses  lifted  up  the  Serpent  in 


9o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

the  Wilderness — the  Only-begotten  sent  of  God  as  a 
propitiation  for  our  sins:  these  are  one  figure,  domina- 
ting thought  and  inspiring  faith  to  precisely  the  same 
intent  in  the  epistle  and  in  the  gospel.  And  in  this 
character,  as  in  every  other,  Jesus  stands  alone.  It  is 
in  Him  and  in  His  death,  in  no  other  person  and  no 
other  act,  that  for  the  New  Testament  Christian  sin  is 
annulled.  Here  above  all,  we  may  say,  for  New  Testa- 
ment faith,  there  is  none  other  name. 

Summary  and  Transition 

Our  investigation  of  the  place  which  Jesus  occupied  in 
the  faith  of  those  who  wrote  the  New  Testament,  and  of 
those  whom  they  addressed,  is  now  complete.  To  the 
present  writer  it  is  conclusive  evidence  that  in  spite  of 
the  various  modes  of  thought  and  feeling  which  the 
canonical  Christian  writings  exhibit,  there  is  really  such 
a  thing  as  a  self -consistent  New  Testament,  and  a  self- 
consistent  Christian  religion.  There  is  a  unity  in  all 
these  early  Christian  books  which  is  powerful  enough 
to  absorb  and  subdue  their  differences,  and  that  unity 
is  to  be  found  in  a  common  religious  relation  to  Christ, 
a  common  debt  to  Him,  a  common  sense  that  everything 
in  the  relations  of  God  and  man  must  be  and  is  deter- 
mined by  Him.  We  may  even  go  further  and  say  that 
in  all  the  great  types  of  Christianity  represented  in  the 
New  Testament  the  relations  of  God  and  man  are  re- 
garded as  profoundly  affected  by  sin,  and  that  the  sense 
of  a  common  debt  to  Christ  is  the  sense  of  what  Chris- 
tians owe  to  Him  in  dealing  with  the  situation  which  sin 
has  created.  This  may  not  involve  either  a  formally 
identical  Christology,  or  a  formally  identical  doctrine  of 
Propitiation,  in  every  part  of  the  New  Testament;  but 
it  is  the  justification  of  every  effort  of  Christian  intelli- 


SUMMARY  AND  TRANSITION  91 

gence  to  define  to  itself  more  clearly  who  Jesus  is  and 
what  He  has  done  for  our  salvation  from  sin.  The 
New  Testament  writers  did  not  think  of  Christology 
and  of  the  Atonement  without  sufficient  motives,  and 
as  long  as  their  sense  of  debt  to  Christ  survives,  the 
motive  for  thinking  on  the  same  subjects,  and  surely  in 
the  main  on  the  same  lines,  will  survive  also.  But  this 
is  not  our  interest  here.  What  we  have  now  to  ask 
is  whether  the  religion  of  the  New  Testament,  consist- 
ing as  it  does  in  such  a  peculiar  relation  to  Him  as  we 
have  seen  illustrated  in  all  the  documents,  can  be  justi- 
fied by  appeal  to  Christ  Himself.  With  all  its  peculiari- 
ties, New  Testament  Christianity  claims  to  rest  on  a 
historical  basis,  and  it  is  a  question  of  supreme  impor- 
tance whether  the  historical  basis  which  can  be  provided 
is  adequate  to  support  it.  The  question  is  at  the  present 
time  not  only  important,  but  urgent,  for  the  existing 
Christian  Churches,  in  which  the  relation  of  faith  to  Jesus 
perpetuates  on  the  whole  the  New  Testament  type,  are 
perplexed  by  voices  which  call  them  away  from  it  in 
different  directions.  On  the  one  hand,  we  have  our 
philosophical  persons  who,  on  the  specious  pretext  of 
lifting  religion  into  its  proper  atmosphere  of  universal 
and  eternal  truth,  invite  us,  as  has  been  already  noticed, 
to  dismiss  historical  considerations  entirely.  The  truths 
by  which  Christianity  lives  are  true,  it  is  argued,  what- 
ever we  may  or  may  not  be  able  to  find  out  about  Jesus; 
they  are  true,  not  in  Him,  but  in  themselves  and  in  God. 
It  is  a  mere  failure  in  intelligence—  a  sort  of  cowardice,  to 
speak  plainly — which  makes  people  nervous  about  Jesus 
and  the  gospels.  The  Christian  religion  belongs  to 
a  world  to  which  the  historical  and  contingent,  even 
though  they  should  be  represented  by  the  life  of  Jesus, 
are  matters  of  indifference.  It  will  survive  in  all  that 
is  essential  to  it  though  Jesus  should  entirely  disappear. 


92  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

On  the  other  hand,  we  have  our  historical  persons,  whose 
views  are  very  different.  To  get  back  to  Jesus,  they 
tell  us,  is  not  the  unimportant  thing  which  philosophy 
would  make  it.  It  is  vital  to  get  back.  But  when 
we  do  get  back,  what  do  we  find?  Not,  according 
to  many  of  them,  anything  which  justifies  the  New  Tes- 
tament attitude  to  Jesus,  or  which  supports  what  we 
have  just  seen  to  be  the  New  Testament  religion.  What 
we  find  in  the  historical  Jesus  is  not  the  author  or  the 
object  of  the  Christian  faith  known  to  history,  but  a 
child  of  God  like  ourselves — a  pious,  humble,  good  man, 
who  called  others  to  trust  the  Father  as  He  trusted,  and 
to  be  children  of  God  like  Him.  The  Christian  religion 
is  not  thus  left  to  us,  with  the  added  advantage  that  it 
is  historically  secured;  when  the  historical  basis  is  laid 
bare,  it  is  seen  that  the  Christian  religion  cannot  be 
sustained  upon  it.  The  Christian  religion  has  been  a 
mistake,  a  delusion,  from  the  beginning;  our  duty  is 
to  revert  from  it  to  the  religion  of  Jesus  Himself,  to  cast 
away  the  primitive  Christian  faith  and  its  testimony,  and 
to  fall  back  upon  the  pattern  believer.  It  is  obvious 
that  there  is  something  dogmatic  in  both  these  appeals 
to  the  Church;  there  is  a  theory  of  religion,  of  history, 
and  of  reality  in  general,  implied  alike  in  the  philo- 
sophical appeal  which  would  give  us  a  Christianity 
without  Jesus,  and  in  the  historical  one  which  would 
give  us  a  Jesus  who  could  take  no  responsibility  for 
anything  that  has  ever  been  called  Christian.  The 
writer  has  no  such  confidence  in  either  theory  as  would 
justify  him  in  assenting  off-hand  to  the  stupendous  im- 
peachment of  Providence  which  is  implied  in  both.  It  is 
easy  enough  to  admit  that  there  may  have  been  errors  of 
every  kind  in  the  historical  development  of  Christianity. 
The  adherents  of  the  new  religion  may  have  made  in- 
tellectual blunders  and  moral  ones,  and  no  doubt  made 


SUMMARY  AND  TRANSITION  93 

both.  Once,  too,  the  possibility  of  going  astray  is  ad- 
mitted, it  is  impossible  to  limit  it;  if  there  can  be  such 
a  thing  as  wandering,  there  may  be  wandering  very  far. 
But  what  it  is  not  easy  to  admit  is  that  Christianity 
itself,  in  the  only  form  in  which  it  has  ever  existed  and 
functioned  as  a  religion  among  men,  has  been  a  mistake 
and  misconception  from  the  first.  This  is  the  ultimate 
meaning  of  these  'historical'  and  'philosophical'  ap- 
peals to  the  Church,  and  it  certainly  needs  courage  to 
assent  to  them  when  their  meaning  is  perceived.  Less 
courageous  men,  or  perhaps  we  may  be  allowed  to  say 
men  with  a  larger  perception  of  what  is  involved,  will 
feel  bound  to  proceed  with  less  precipitation.  It  is  not 
self-evident  that  eternal  truth,  or  rather  our  grasp  and 
apprehension  of  it,  can  be  in  no  way  historically  con- 
ditioned. It  is  not  self-evident  that  no  historical  person 
could  really  sustain  the  phenomenon  of  the  Christian 
religion.  Dismissing  the  summary  and  a  priori  de- 
cisions in  which  courageous  spirits  lay  down  the  law 
beforehand  to  a  world  of  which  we  know  so  little,  it  is 
our  duty  to  raise  the  second  of  the  two  questions  with 
which  this  discussion  opened,  and  to  examine  it  as  dis- 
interestedly and  as  thoroughly  as  the  first.  It  is  the 
question,  Does  Jesus,  as  He  is  revealed  to  us  in  history, 
justify  the  Christian  religion  as  we  have  had  it  exhibited 
to  us  in  the  New  Testament? 


BOOK  II 

THE  HISTORICAL  BASIS  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN 

FAITH 


BOOK  II 

THE  HISTORICAL  BASIS  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN 
FAITH 

The  question  which  has  just  been  stated  might  be  ap- 
proached in  various  ways.  We  might  begin  with  an 
investigation  of  the  sources  to  which  we  owe  our  know- 
ledge of  Jesus,  build  up  by  degrees  such  an  acquaint- 
ance with  Him  as  could  be  formed  in  this  way,  and  then 
consider  what  relation  it  bore  to  the  place  He  holds  in 
New  Testament  faith.  A  moment's  reflection  on  what 
has  preceded  will  show  the  insufficiency  and  the  im- 
propriety of  this  method.  The  primary  testimony  of 
the  disciples  to  Jesus  was  their  testimony  to  His  resurrec- 
tion: except  as  Risen  and  Exalted  they  never  preached 
Jesus  at  all.  It  was  His  Resurrection  and  Exaltation 
which  made  Him  Lord  and  Christ,  and  gave  Him  His 
place  in  their  faith  and  life;  and  unless  their  testimony 
to  this  fundamental  fact  can  be  accepted,  it  is  not  worth 
while  to  carry  the  investigation  further.  Nothing  that 
Jesus  was  or  did,  apart  from  the  Resurrection,  can  jus- 
tify or  sustain  the  religious  life  which  we  see  in  the  New 
Testament.  Those  who  reject  the  apostolic  testimony 
at  this  point  may,  indeed,  have  the  highest  apprecia- 
tion for  the  memory  of  Jesus;  they  may  reverence  the 
figure  preserved  for  us  by  the  evangelists  as  the  ideal  of 
humanity,  the  supreme  attainment  of  the  race  in  the  field 
of  character;  but  they  can  have  no  relation  to  Jesus  re- 
sembling that  in  which  New  Testament  Christians 
lived  and  moved  and  had  their  being.  The  general 
7  97 


98  JESUS  AND  THE  GOSPEL 

question,  therefore,  whether  Jesus,  as  He  is  known 
to  us  from  history,  can  sustain  the  Christian  religion 
as  it  is  exhibited  to  us  in  the  New  Testament,  takes 
at  the  outset  this  special  form:  Can  we  accept  the  tes- 
timony which  we  have  to  the  resurrection  and  exalta- 
tion of  Jesus? 


THE  RESURRECTION 

It  is  possible,  as  every  one  knows,  to  decline  to  raise 
this  question.  There  is  a  dogmatic  conception  of  history 
which  tells  us  beforehand  that  there  cannot  be  in  history 
any  such  event  as  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  is  represented 
in  the  New  Testament  to  be:  no  possible  or  conceivable 
evidence  could  prove  it.  With  such  a  dogma,  which  is 
part  of  a  conception  of  reality  in  general,  it  is  impossible 
to  argue;  for  he  who  holds  it  cannot  but  regard  it  as  a 
supreme  standard  by  which  he  is  bound  to  test  every 
argument  alleged  against  it.  It  is  not  for  him  an  isolated 
and  therefore  a  modifiable  opinion;  it  is  part  of  the 
structure  of  intelligence  to  which  all  real  opinions  will 
conform.  But,  though  it  is  vain  to  controvert  such  a 
dogma  by  argument,  it  may  be  demolished  by  collision 
with  facts;  and  it  is  surely  the  less  prejudiced  method  to 
ask  what  it  is  that  the  New  Testament  witnesses  assert, 
and  what  is  the  value  of  their  testimony.  Men's  minds 
have  varied  about  the  structure  of  intelligence  and  about 
its  constitutive  or  regulative  laws,  and  it  is  one  of  the 
elementary  principles  of  learning  to  recognise  that  reality 
is  larger  than  any  individual  intelligence,  and  that  the 
growth  of  intelligence  depends  on  its  recognition  of  this 
truth.  It  is  quite  conceivable  that  the  fundamental  fact 
on  which  the  life  of  New  Testament  Christianity  rests,  is 


THE  RESURRECTION  99 

abruptly  rejected  by  many,  under  the  constraint  of  some 
such  dogma,  while  yet  they  have  no  clear  idea  either  of 
the  fact  itself,  as  the  New  Testament  represents  it,  or 
of  the  evidence  on  which  it  was  originally  believed  and 
has  been  believed  by  multitudes  ever  since.  And  if  it  is 
important,  looking  to  those  who  deny  that  such  an  event 
as  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  can  have  taken  place,  or  is 
capable  of  proof,  to  present  the  facts  bearing  on  the  sub- 
ject as  simply,  clearly,  and  fully  as  possible,  it  is  no  less 
important  to  do  so  in  view  of  those  who  are  so  preoccu- 
pied with  the  spiritual  significance  of  the  resurrection 
that  they  are  willing  (it  might  seem)  to  ignore  the  fact 
as  of  comparatively  little  or,  indeed,  of  no  account.  When 
Harnack,  for  example,  distinguishes  the  Easter  Faith 
from  the  Easter  Message,  he  practically  takes  this  latter 
position.  The  Easter  Faith  is  'the  conviction  of  the  vic- 
tory of  the  crucified  over  death,  of  the  power  and  the 
righteousness  of  God,  and  of  the  life  of  Him  who  is  the 
first-born  among  many  brethren.'  This  is  the  main 
thing,  and  just  because  it  is  a  faith  it  is  not  really  depen- 
dent on  the  Easter  Message,  which  deals  with  the  empty 
grave,  the  appearances  to  the  disciples,  and  so  forth. 
We  can  keep  the  faith  without  troubling  about  the  mes- 
sage. 'Whatever  may  have  happened  at  the  grave 
and  in  the  appearances,  one  thing  is  certain:  from  this 
grave  the  indestructible  faith  in  the  conquest  of  death 
and  in  an  eternal  life  has  taken  its  origin.' l  Sympathis- 
ing as  we  must  with  Harnack's  genuinely  evangelistic 
desire  to  leave  nothing  standing  between  the  mind  of 
the  age  and  the  hope  of  the  gospel  which  can  possibly 
be  put  away,  we  may  nevertheless  doubt  whether  the 
Easter  Faith  and  the  Easter  Message  are  so  indifferent 
to  each  other.  They  were  not  unrelated  at  the  begin- 
ning, and  if  we  reflect  on  the  fact  that  they  are  generally 

1  Das  Wesen  des  Christentums,  101  f. 


ioo  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

rejected  together,  it  may  well  seem  precipitate  to  assume 
that  they  are  independent  of  each  other  now.  To  say 
that  the  faith  produced  the  message— that  Jesus  rose 
again  in  the  souls  of  His  disciples,  in  their  resurgent 
faith  and  love,  and  that  this,  and  this  alone,  gave  birth 
to  all  the  stories  of  the  empty  grave  and  the  appearances 
of  the  Lord  to  His  own— is  to  pronounce  a  purely  dog- 
matic judgment.  What  underlies  it  is  not  the  historical 
evidence  as  the  documents  enable  us  to  reach  it,  but  an 
estimate  of  the  situation  dictated  by  a  philosophical 
theory  which  has  discounted  the  evidence  beforehand. 
It  is  not  intended  here  to  meet  dogma  with  dogma,  but  to 
ask  what  the  New  Testament  evidence  is,  what  it  means, 
and  what  it  is  worth. 

Much  of  the  difficulty  and  embarrassment  of  the  sub- 
ject is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  study  of  the  evidences  for 
the  resurrection  has  so  often  begun  at  the  wrong  end. 
People  have  started  with  the  narratives  in  the  evangelists 
and  become  immersed  in  the  details  of  these,  with  all  the 
intricate  and  perhaps  insoluble  questions  they  raise,  both 
literary  and  historical.  Difficulties  at  this  point  have 
insensibly  but  inevitably  become  difficulties  in  their 
minds  attaching  to  the  resurrection,  and  affecting  their 
whole  attitude  to  New  Testament  religion.  It  ought  to 
be  apparent  that,  so  far  as  the  fact  of  the  resurrection 
of  Jesus  is  concerned,  the  narratives  of  the  evangelists 
are  quite  the  least  important  part  of  the  evidence  with 
which  we  have  to  deal.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say 
that  if  we  do  not  accept  the  resurrection  on  grounds 
which  lie  outside  this  area,  we  shall  not  accept  it  on  the 
grounds  presented  here.  The  real  historical  evidence 
for  the  resurrection  is  the  fact  that  it  was  believed, 
preached,  propagated,  and  produced  its  fruit  and  effect 
in  the  new  phenomenon  of  the  Christian  Church,  long 
before  any  of  our  gospels  was  written.     This  is  not  said 


THE  RESURRECTION  101 

to  disparage  the  gospels,  or  to  depreciate  what  they  tell, 
but  only  to  put  the  question  on  its  true  basis.  Faith  in 
the  resurrection  was  not  only  prevalent  but  immensely 
powerful  before  any  of  our  New  Testament  books  was 
written.  Not  one  of  them  would  ever  have  been  written 
but  for  that  faith.  It  is  not  this  or  that  in  the  New 
Testament— it  is  not  the  story  of  the  empty  tomb,  or  of 
the  appearing  of  Jesus  in  Jerusalem  or  in  Galilee — 
which  is  the  primary  evidence  for  the  resurrection;  it  is 
the  New  Testament  itself.  The  life  that  throbs  in  it 
from  beginning  to  end,  the  life  that  always  fills  us  again 
with  wonder  as  it  beats  upon  us  from  its  pages,  is  the 
life  which  the  Risen  Saviour  has  quickened  in  Christian 
souls.  The  evidence  for  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  is  the 
existence  of  the  Church  in  that  extraordinary  spiritual 
vitality  which  confronts  us  in  the  New  Testament.  This 
is  its  own  explanation  of  its  being.  'He,'  says  Peter, 
'hath  poured  forth  this  which  ye  both  see  and  hear' 
(Acts  2  33) ;  and,  apart  from  all  minuter  investigations,  it 
is  here  the  strength  of  the  case  for  the  resurrection  rests. 
The  existence  of  the  Christian  Church,  the  existence  of 
the  New  Testament:  these  incomparable  phenomena  in 
human  history  are  left  without  adequate  or  convincing 
explanation  if  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  be  denied.  If 
it  be  said  that  they  can  be  explained,  not  by  the  resur- 
rection itself  but  by  faith  in  the  resurrection,  that  raises 
the  question,  already  alluded  to,  of  the  origin  of  such 
faith.  Does  it  originate  in  the  soul  itself,  in  memories 
of  Jesus,  in  spiritual  convictions  about  what  must  have 
been  the  destiny  of  a  spirit  so  pure?  Or  were  there 
experiences  of  another  kind,  independent  historical 
matters  of  fact,  by  which  it  was  generated  and  to  which 
it  could  appeal?  Was  it,  in  short,  a  self -begotten  Easter 
Faith,  which  produced  the  Easter  Message  in  the  way  of 
self-support  or  self-defence;  or  was  there  an  independent 


102  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

God-given  Easter  Message  which  evoked  the  Easter 
Faith?  We  could  not  ask  a  more  vital  question,  and 
fortunately  there  are  in  the  New  Testament  abundant 
materials  to  answer  it. 

The  oldest  testimony  we  have  to  the  resurrection  of 
Jesus,  apart  from  that  fundamental  evidence  just  alluded 
to  as  pervading  the  New  Testament,  is  contained  in 
i  Cor.  15.  The  epistle  is  dated  by  Sanday l  in  the 
spring  of  55,  and  represents  what  Paul  had  taught  in 
Corinth  when  he  came  to  the  city  for  the  first  time  be- 
tween 50  and  52;  but  these  dates  taken  by  themselves 
might  only  mislead.  For  what  Paul  taught  in  Corinth 
was  the  common  Christian  tradition  (ver.  3  ff.);  he  had 
been  taught  it  himself  when  he  became  a  Christian,  and 
in  his  turn  he  transmitted  it  to  others.  But  Paul  became 
a  Christian  not  very  long  after  the  death  of  Christ — 
according  to  Harnack  one  year  after,  to  Ramsay  three 
or  four,  to  Lightfoot  perhaps  six  or  seven.2  At  a  date 
so  close  to  the  alleged  events  we  find  that  the  funda- 
mental facts  of  Christianity  as  taught  in  the  primitive 
circle  were  these— that  Christ  died  for  our  sins;  that  He 
was  buried;  that  He  rose  on  the  third  day  and  remains 
in  the  state  of  exaltation;  and  that  He  appeared  to  cer- 
tain persons.  The  mention  of  the  burial  is  important 
in  this  connexion  as  defining  what  is  meant  by  the  rising. 
We  see  from  it  that  it  would  have  conveyed  no  meaning 
to  Paul  or  to  any  member  of  the  original  Christian  circle 
to  say  that  it  was  the  spirit  of  Christ  which  rose  into  new 
life,  or  that  He  rose  again  in  the  faith  of  His  devoted 
followers,  who  could  not  bear  the  thought  that  for  Him 
death  should  end  all.  The  rising  is  relative  to  the  grave 
and  the  burial,  and  if  we  cannot  speak  of  a  bodily  resur- 
rection we  should  not  speak  of  resurrection  at  all.     In 

1  Encyclopedia  Biblica,  903  f. 

2  See  article  'Chronology'  in  Hastings  Bible  Dictionary,  i.  p.  424. 


THE  RESURRECTION  103 

the  same  connexion  also  we  should  notice  the  specifica- 
tion of  the  third  day.  This  is  perfectly  definite,  and  it 
is  perfectly  guaranteed.  The  third  day  was  the  first  day 
of  the  week,  and  every  Sunday  as  it  comes  round  is  a 
new  argument  for  the  resurrection.  The  decisive  event 
in  the  inauguration  of  the  new  religion  took  place  on 
that  day — an  event  so  decisive  and  so  sure  that  it  dis- 
placed even  the  Sabbath,  and  made  not  the  last  but  the 
first  day  of  the  week  that  which  Christians  celebrated  as 
holy  to  the  Lord.  The  New  Testament  references  to 
the  first  day  of  the  week  as  the  Lord's  day  (Acts  20  7, 
Rev.  1  10)  are  weighty  arguments  for  the  historical  resurrec- 
tion; that  is,  for  a  resurrection  which  has  a  place  and 
weight  among  datable  events.1 

An  important  light  is  cast  on  Paul's  conception  of 
the  resurrection  of  Jesus  by  his  use,  in  speaking  of  it,  of 
the  perfect  tense  (tpjreprau) — 'He  hath  been  raised.' 
Christ  rose,  it  signifies,  and  remains  in  the  risen  state. 
Death  has  no  more  dominion  over  Him.  His  resurrec- 
tion was  not  like  the  raisings  from  the  dead  recorded  in 
the  gospels,  where  restoration  to  the  old  life  and  its  duties 
and  necessities  is  even  made  prominent,  and  where  the 
final  prospect  of  death  remains.  Jesus  does  not  come 
back  to  the  old  life  at  all.  As  risen,  He  belongs  already 
to  another  world,  to  another  mode  of  being.  The  resur- 
rection is  above  all  things  the  revelation  of  life  in  this 
new  order,  a  life  which  has  won  the  final  triumph  over 

1  The  curious  idea,  which  has  now  become  a  tradition  among  a  certain 
class  of  scholars,  that  the  date  of  the  resurrection  is  due,  not  to  anything 
which  took  place  on  the  first  day  of  the  week,  but  to  the  prophecy  of 
Hosea  (62) — 'After  two  days  will  He  revive  us;  on  the  third  day  He  will 
raise  us  up  and  we  shall  live  before  Him' — ought  surely  to  be  disposed 
of  by  the  consideration  that  there  is  no  allusion  to  this  text  in  connexion 
with  the  resurrection,  either  in  the  New  Testament  itself,  or  (so  far  as 
the  writer  is  aware)  in  any  other  quarter,  earlier  than  the  nineteenth 
century.  Curious,  however,  as  this  idea  is,  it  is  not  so  entirely  extraor- 
dinary as  Schmiedel's  suggestion  (Encyclopccdia  Biblica,  4067)  that 
the  date  of  the  resurrection  is  deduced  from  2  Kings  20  5. 


io4  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

sin  and  death.  This  was  thoroughly  understood  by  the 
original  witnesses;  the  resurrection  of  Jesus,  or  the  anti- 
cipated resurrection  of  Christians  as  dependent  upon  it, 
was  no  return  to  nature  and  to  the  life  of  the  world;  it 
was  the  manifestation,  transcending  nature,  of  new  life 
from  God. 

In  the  passage  with  which  we  are  dealing,  indeed, 
Paul  enters  into  no  further  particulars  of  any  kind.  He 
recites  a  list  of  persons  to  whom  Jesus  had  appeared — 
Cephas,  the  Twelve,  more  than  five  hundred  brethren 
at  once,  James,  all  the  apostles,  himself.  It  is  a  fair 
inference  from  the  mode  of  this  enumeration  that  the 
appearances  are  given  in  their  chronological  order,  but 
it  is  quite  unwarranted  to  say  *  that  Paul  in  this  list 
guarantees  not  only  chronological  order  but  completeness. 
The  list  gives  us  no  ground  for  saying  that  when  Paul 
was  in  contact  with  the  Jerusalem  Church  its  testimony  to 
the  resurrection  included  no  such  stories  of  the  appear- 
ing of  Jesus  to  women  as  are  now  found  in  our  gospels. 
Neither  did  the  purpose  for  which  Paul  adduced  this 
series  of  witnesses  require  him  to  do  more  than  mention 
their  names  as  those  of  persons  who  had  seen  the  Lord. 
It  was  the  fact  of  the  resurrection  which  was  denied  at 
Corinth — the  resurrection  of  Christians,  in  the  first  in- 
stance, but  by  implication,  as  Paul  believed,  that  of  Jesus 
also — and  a  simple  assertion  of  the  fact  was  what  he 
wanted  to  meet  the  case.  This  is  adequately  given 
when  he  recites  in  succession  a  series  of  persons  to  whom 
the  Lord  had  appeared.  That  he  says  nothing  more 
than  that  to  these  persons  the  Lord  did  appear  is  no  proof 
that  he  had  nothing  more  to  say.  He  could,  no  doubt, 
have  told  a  great  deal  more  about  that  last  appearance 
which  the  Lord  had  made  to  himself,  if  he  had  thought 
it  relevant;  and  the  probabilities  are  that  in  this  outline 

1  With  Schmiedel  (Encyclopedia  Biblica,  4058). 


THE  RESURRECTION  105 

of  his  gospel  and  of  the  evidence  on  which  it  rested,  he 
is  merely  reminding  the  Corinthians  in  a  summary 
fashion  of  what  he  had  enlarged  upon  in  all  its  circum- 
stances and  significance  when  he  was  among  them.  The 
term  &<pt)r}  (He  appeared),  which  is  used  alike  in  speaking 
of  Christ's  appearing  to  Paul  and  to  the  others  who  had 
the  same  experience,  does  not  enable  us  to  define  that 
experience  with  any  precision.  It  is  used  elsewhere, 
certainly,  of  'visionary'  seeing,  but  it  is  used  equally,  for 
example,  in  Acts  7  26,  of  seeing  which  is  in  no  sense 
visionary.  What  it  suggests  in  almost  every  case  is  the 
idea  of  something  sudden  or  unexpected;  that  which  is 
seen  is  conceived  to  be  so,  not  because  one  is  looking  at 
it  or  for  it,  but  because  it  has  unexpectedly  thrust  itself 
upon  the  sight.  The  translation  'He  appeared,'  rather 
than  'He  was  seen,'  adequately  represents  this.  But 
though  Paul  can  use  the  active  form,  as  in  ch.  91 — 'Have 
not  I  seen  Jesus  our  Lord?' — neither  by  that  nor  by  the 
passive  does  he  do  more  than  convey  the  fact  that  he  had 
had,  in  what  he  can  only  describe  in  terms  of  vision,  an 
experience  in  which  he  was  conscious  of  the  presence 
of  the  Risen  Saviour. 

Into  this  experience  we  may  not  be  able  to  penetrate, 
but  we  are  entitled  to  reject  explanations  of  it  which 
assume  it  to  be  a  mere  illusion.  Such  as  it  was,  it  left 
Paul  in  no  doubt  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  who  had  been 
crucified  at  Calvary,  was  exalted  to  the  right  hand  of  God 
in  divine  power  and  glory.  Power  and  glory  are  the 
two  words  which  the  apostle  most  frequently  uses  in 
speaking  of  the  resurrection.  The  Risen  Jesus  is  the 
Lord  of  glory  (1  Cor.  2  8).  He  was  declared  or  consti- 
tuted Son  of  God  in  power  by  the  resurrection  from  the 
dead  (Rom.  1 4).  He  was  raised  from  the  dead  by  the 
glory  of  the  Father  (Rom.  64).  The  working  of  the 
strength  of  His  might  which  He  wrought  in  Christ  when 


106  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

He  raised  Him  from  the  dead  and  set  Him  at  His  own 
right  hand  in  the  heavenly  places,  far  above  all  princi- 
pality and  power  and  might  and  dominion,  and  every 
name  that  is  named  not  only  in  this  world  but  also  in 
that  which  is  to  come — this  was  the  supreme  manifesta- 
tion of  what  the  power  of  God  could  do.     Paul  has  no 
abstract  term  like  omnipotence,  and  when  he  wishes  to 
give  a  practical  religious  equivalent  for  it  he  points  to  the 
power  which  has  raised  Christ  from  the  grave  and  set 
Him  on  the  throne  with  all  things  under  His  feet.     The 
power  which  has  done  this  is  the  greatest  which  the 
apostle  can  conceive;  it  is  the  power  which  works  in  us, 
and  it  is  great  enough  for  every  need  of  the  soul  (Ephes. 
3  20,  i 19f).     In  one  passage  he  uses  the  expression  'the 
body  of  His  glory'  (Phil.  3  21).     The  Risen  Lord,  in  con- 
trast with  mortal  men  upon  the  earth,  who  bear  about  a 
'body  of  humiliation '  or  'lowliness,'  lives  in  the  splen- 
dour and  immortality  of  heaven.     It  is  no  use  asking  for 
a  definition  of  such  words:    Paul  could  no  more  have 
given  them  than  we  can.     It  is  no  use  asking  for  an  ex- 
planation of  the  precise  relation  between  the  body  of 
humiliation  and  the  body  of  glory;  such  an  explanation 
was  entirely  out  of  his  reach.     All  he  could  have  asserted, 
and  what  he  undoubtedly  did  assert,  was  that  the  same 
Jesus  whose  body  had  been  broken  on  the  cross  had 
manifested    Himself    to    him    in    divine    splendour    and 
power;  and  though  he  should  never  be  able  to  say  any- 
thing about  the  connexion  of  the  two  modes  of  being 
further  than  this,  that  Jesus  had  been  raised  from  the 
dead  by  the  glory  of  the  Father,  it  would  not  in  the  least 
affect  his  assurance  that  the  exaltation  of  Jesus  was  as 
real  as  His  crucifixion.     If  any  one  wished  to  argue  that 
for  Paul's  belief  in  the  resurrection  of  Christ,  the  empty 
tomb  in  Joseph's  garden  is  immaterial,  he  might  make  a 
plausible. case;  the  apostle's  certainty  of  the  resurrection 


THE   RESURRECTION  107 

rested  immediately  and  finally  on  the  appearing  of  Jesus 
to  himself,  and  he  would  have  possessed  that  certainty 
and  lived  in  it  though  he  had  never  become  acquainted 
with  the  circumstances  of  the  death  and  burial  of  Jesus, 
and  with  the  subsequent  events  as  they  are  recorded  in 
the  gospels.  But  the  whole  of  the  discussion  in  the 
fifteenth  chapter  of  1st  Corinthians  shows  that,  though  a 
plausible  case  could  be  stated  on  these  lines,  it  is  not  the 
case  for  which  we  could  claim  the  support  of  the  apostle 
himself.  Unable  as  he  is  to  explain  the  relation  of  the 
natural  to  the  spiritual  body,  of  the  body  of  humiliation 
to  the  body  of  glory— a  'mystery'  (ver.  51)  can  only  be 
announced,  it  cannot  be  explained — his  assumption 
throughout  is  certainly  not  that  the  two  have  nothing  to 
do  with  each  other.  It  is  the  body  of  humiliation  itself 
which  in  the  case  of  Christians  is  transformed  and  fash- 
ioned like  the  body  of  Christ's  glory;  and  it  is  this,  rather 
than  the  idea  that  there  is  no  connexion  between  the  two 
bodies,  which  suggests  the  line  on  which  the  apostle's 
own  thoughts  would  run. 

But  what,  it  may  be  said,  is  the  value,  historically 
speaking,  of  such  evidence  as  this  to  the  resurrection  of 
Jesus?  Grant  that  Paul  and  the  other  persons  whom 
he  enumerates  had  experiences  which  they  announced 
to  the  world  in  the  terms,  'We  have  seen  the  Lord,'  the 
question  as  to  the  nature  of  these  experiences  remains. 
In  the  Christian  religion  one  interpretation  has  been  put 
upon  them.  They  have  been  regarded  as  historical  and 
independent  guarantees  of  a  transcendent  world,  a  life 
beyond  death,  the  sovereignty  of  Jesus,  the  reconcilia- 
tion of  the  sinful  world  and  God.  But  is  this  interpre- 
tation necessary?  No  one  any  longer  questions  the 
honesty  of  the  apostolic  testimony  to  the  resurrection: 
the  only  question  is  as  to  its  meaning  and  value.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  appearances  did  appear  to  certain 


108  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

persons;  the  problem  is  how  are  we  to  give  such  appear- 
ances their  proper  place  and  interpretation  in  the  whole 
scheme  of  things?  Is  it  not  much  more  probable  that 
they  are  to  be  explained  from  within,  from  the  moods 
of  thought  and  feeling  in  the  souls  which  experienced  them, 
than  from  anything  so  inconceivable,  and  so  incommen- 
surable with  experience,  as  the  intrusion  of  another  world 
into  this?  Is  it  not  much  more  probable,  in  short,  that 
they  were  what  philosophers  call  '  subjective,'  states  or 
products  of  the  soul  itself,  and  not  'objective,'  realities 
independent  of  the  soul?  This  is  not  equivalent  to 
denying  them  any  reality,  though  it  relieves  us  from  the 
necessity  of  discussing  such  questions  as  the  empty 
tomb.  Neither  does  it  impair  the  greatness  of  Jesus. 
On  the  contrary,  it  may  even  be  urged  that  it  magnifies 
Jesus.  How  great  this  man  must  have  been  who  could 
not  be  extinguished  even  by  death,  but  who  had  made 
an  impression  on  the  minds  of  His  friends  so  profound 
and  ineffaceable,  who  had  inspired  them  with  faith  and 
hope  in  Himself  so  vivid  and  invincible,  that  He  rose  in 
their  hearts  out  of  the  gloom  and  despair  of  the  cruci- 
fixion to  celestial  glory  and  sovereignty!  This  is  a  line 
of  argument  which  is  constantly  and  powerfully  urged 
at  the  present  time,  and  that  too  by  many  who  are  far 
from  wanting  smypathy  with  the  life  and  teaching  of 
Jesus.  This  is  of  itself  a  reason  which  entitles  it  to  the 
most  careful  consideration.  But  it  demands  attention 
further  because  it  is  clear  that,  if  it  leaves  anything  at 
all  which  can  be  called  Christian  religion,  it  is  not  that 
form  of  Christianity  which  alone  we  have  been  able  to 
discover  in  the  New  Testament. 

Without  professing  or  feeling  any  undue  sympathy 
with  the  Paley  or  Old  Bailey  school  of  apologetics,  we 
may  surely  have  our  doubts  as  to  whether  the  testimony 
of  the  first  witnesses  can  be  so  easily  disposed  of.     Prac- 


THE  RESURRECTION  109 

tically  this  estimate  of  it  means  that  it  is  to  be  treated 
as  a  pathological  phenomenon:  it  belongs  to  the  dis- 
ease and  disorder,  not  to  the  health  and  sanity  of  the 
human  spirit.  Paul  and  the  other  apostles  no  doubt 
had  visions  of  Jesus  in  power  and  glory,  but  they  ought 
not  to  have  had  them.  Unless  their  brains  had  been 
overheated  they  would  not  have  had  them.  It  can 
never  be  anything  but  a  pity  that  they  did  have  them. 
There  are  people  who  say  such  things  because  their 
philosophy  constrains  them,  and  there  are  people  also, 
equally  entitled  to  have  an  opinion,  who  would  not  say 
such  things  for  any  philosophy.  It  is  not  easy  to  dis- 
credit offhand,  as  mere  illusion,  what  has  meant  so 
much  in  the  life  of  the  human  race.  It  is  not  easy  to 
suppose  that  men,  who  in  other  respects  were  quite  of 
sound  mind,  were  all  in  this  extraordinary  experience 
victims  of  the  same  delusion.  There  are,  of  course,  things 
which  no  testimony  could  establish;  but  where  there  is, 
as  here,  a  great  mass  of  testimony,  and  that  in  conditions 
which  compel  us  to  treat  it  seriously,  it  is,  to  say  the 
least,  rash  to  put  upon  it  an  interpretation  which  annuls 
completely  the  significance  it  had  for  the  witnesses  them- 
selves. 

It  is  at  this  point,  therefore,  that  we  must  take  into 
account  those  considerations  which  gave  weight  from 
the  beginning  to  the  apostolic  testimony,  and  won  ac- 
ceptance for  it.  If  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  could  be 
treated  purely  as  a  question  in  metaphysics,  and  the 
witness  of  the  apostles  purely  as  a  question  in  psychol- 
ogy, we  should  find  ourselves  confronted  with  insoluble 
difficulties.  A  theory  of  the  universe  which  had  no 
room  for  the  resurrection  would  find  in  psychology  the 
means  of  reducing  the  evidence;  those  who  could  not 
reduce  the  evidence  would  plead  for  a  more  elastic  view 
of  the  universe;  but  the  issue  would  never  be  decided. 


no  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

If,  however,  we  leave  these  abstractions  behind  us,  and 
come  face  to  face  with  the  facts,  the  situation  is  entirely 
changed.  The  resurrection  is  not  attested  to  meta- 
physicians or  psychologists  as  a  thing  in  itself;  it  is 
preached  to  sinful  men,  in  its  divine  significance  for 
their  salvation,  and  it  is  in  this  concrete  reality  alone 
that  it  exists  or  has  interest  for  the  primitive  witnesses. 
'Him  hath  God  exalted  with  His  right  hand  to  be  a 
Prince  and  a  Saviour,  to  give  repentance  to  Israel  and 
remission  of  sins'  (Acts  531).  'And  He  charged  us  to 
preach  unto  the  people,  and  to  testify  that  this  is  He 
which  is  ordained  of  God  to  be  the  Judge  of  quick  and 
dead'  (Acts  10 42).  The  considerations  which  are  thus 
brought  into  the  scale,  it  is  easy  to  caricature  and  easy 
to  abuse,  but  fatal  to  neglect.  Any  one  who  appeals 
to  them  is  sure  to  be  charged  with  shifting  his  ground, 
with  evading  the  issue,  with  fisrd^afft?  eft  akXo  yivog, 
and  all  the  other  devices  of  the  apologist  at  his  wits' 
end;  nay,  he  may  even  be  represented  as  saying  to  his 
supposed  adversary,  'I  believe  this  because  I  am  ac- 
cessible to  spiritual  considerations,  and  you  disbelieve 
it  because  you  are  not;  if  you  were  as  good  a  man  as  I 
am,  you  would  believe  it  too.'  But  it  is  surely  possible, 
without  being  either  complacent  or  censorious,  certainly 
without  making  any  personal  comparisons,  to  view  the 
testimony  to  the  resurrection  not  as  an  abstract  or  in- 
sulated phenomenon,  but  in  the  totality  of  the  relations 
in  which  it  was  delivered;  and  if  these  relations  include 
some  which  are  specifically  moral,  so  that  the  attitude 
of  men  to  the  evidence  was  from  the  beginning  and 
must  ever  be,  in  part  at  least,  morally  conditioned,  it  is 
surely  possible  to  say  so  without  being  either  a  Pharisee 
or  an  intellectually  dishonest  man. 

Now  there  are  three  ways  in  which  the  testimony  to 
the  resurrection  is  morally  qualified,  if  one  may  so  speak, 


THE  RESURRECTION  in 

and  therefore  needs  to  be  morally  appreciated.  In 
the  first  place,  it  is  the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  If  the 
witnesses  had  asserted  about  Herod,  or  about  any  or- 
dinary person,  what  they  did  about  Jesus,  the  presump- 
tion would  have  been  all  against  them.  The  moral 
incongruity  would  have  discredited  their  testimony  from 
the  first.  But  the  resurrection  was  that  of  one  in  whom 
His  friends  had  recognised,  while  He  lived,  a  power  and 
goodness  beyond  the  common  measure  of  humanity,  and 
they  were  sensible  when  it  took  place  that  it  was  in 
keeping  with  all  they  had  known,  hoped,  and  believed 
of  Him.  When  Peter  is  reported  to  have  said  that  God 
loosed  the  pangs  of  death  because  it  was  not  possible 
that  He  should  be  holden  of  it  (Acts  224),  it  is  not  too 
much  to  infer  that  this  was  the  truth  present  to  his  mind. 
Is  it  too  much  to  infer  that  sometimes,  when  the  resur- 
rection of  Jesus  is  rejected,  the  rejecter  forgets  that 
it  is  this  resurrection  which  is  in  question?  He  thinks 
of  resurrection  in  general,  the  resurrection  of  any 
one;  possibly  he  thinks  of  it  really  as  the  re-animation 
of  a  corpse;  and  he  judges  quite  confidently,  and  if  this 
be  all  that  is  in  his  mind  quite  rightly,  that  it  is  not  worth 
while  weighing  anything  so  light  against  a  well-founded 
conception  of  reality  in  general.  But  if  he  realised 
what  'Jesus'  means — if  he  had  present  to  his  mind 
and  conscience,  in  His  incomparable  moral  value,  the 
Person  whose  resurrection  is  declared — the  problem 
would  be  quite  different.  He  might  find  himself  far 
more  ready,  under  the  impression  of  the  worth  of  such 
a  person,  to  question  the  finality  of  his  scheme  of  the 
universe;  more  willing  to  admit  that  if  there  was  not  to 
be  a  perpetual  contradiction  at  the  heart  of  things,  a 
perpetual  extinction  of  the  higher  by  the  lower,  such  a 
personality  must  find  it  possible  somehow  to  transcend 
the  limitations  of  nature  and  its  laws. 


ii2  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

This  consideration,  it  may  be  said,  is  capable  of  being 
turned  in  the  opposite  direction.  Those  who  hold  that 
Jesus  only  rose  again  in  the  hearts  of  His  disciples  may 
assert  that  they  put  to  the  proper  account  whatever 
truth  it  contains.  They  admit  that  only  Jesus  could 
have  risen,  only  a  person  who  had  so  wonderfully  im- 
pressed Himself  on  the  memory  and  affections  of  His 
followers;  but  it  was  this  wonderfully  deep  and  vivid 
impression  which  itself  produced  the  resurrection.  Death, 
for  a  moment,  so  to  speak,  had  extinguished  Jesus  in 
their  lives,  but  the  extinction  could  not  be  lasting.  Very 
soon  He  reasserted  His  power.  He  came  to  life  again 
more  triumphant  than  ever.  One  may  venture  to  think 
that  in  all  this  there  is  much  confusion,  and  even  much 
playing  with  words,  in  a  style  quite  unworthy  of  what 
is  at  stake.  To  lose  a  dear  and  valued  friend  is  no 
uncommon  experience,  and  we  know  how  to  describe 
what  follows.  Those  who  do  not  forget  their  departed 
friends  remember  them.  But  to  remember  them  means 
to  recall  them  as  they  were;  it  means  to  have  them  pres- 
ent to  our  minds  in  the  familiar  associations  of  the  past. 
We  may  say  if  we  please  that  they  live  in  our  memory; 
if  we  have  been  so  unhappy  as  to  forget  them,  and  then 
remember  them  once  more,  we  may  say  that  they  have 
come  to  life  again  in  our  memory;  but  it  is  the  old  fa- 
miliar friend  who  so  comes  to  life.  There  is  no  revela- 
tion here,  no  suggestion  of  being  in  a  new  and  higher 
order,  nothing,  in  spite  of  the  language  of  life  and  death 
in  which  it  is  expressed,  which  has  any  analogy  what- 
ever with  the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  Hence  we  may  say 
confidently  that  no  brooding  of  His  friends  on  the  mem- 
ory of  Jesus  would  have  given  that  revival  to  His  per- 
sonality which  they  asserted  when  they  preached  the 
resurrection.  Their  sense  of  the  greatness  and  the 
worth   of   Jesus,   in   all  probability,   would   come   back 


THE  RESURRECTION  113 

on  them  and  fill  their  minds  in  the  hours  which  fol- 
lowed His  death;  but  though  this  prepared  them  in  a 
manner  for  His  appearance,  it  had  no  tendency  what- 
ever to  produce  it.  Jesus  did  not  appear  as  they  had 
known  Him,  in  the  lowliness  and  familiarity  of  the 
life  they  had  shared  in  Galilee;  He  appeared  as  one 
exalted  to  the  right  hand  of  God,  and  having  all  power 
given  Him  in  heaven  and  on  earth.  Their  belief  that 
such  an  appearing  was  no  illusion,  but  the  revelation 
of  the  final  truth  about  Jesus,  was  morally  conditioned, 
no  doubt,  by  their  previous  knowledge  and  apprecia- 
tion of  Him;  but  it  is  hardly  short  of  unmeaning  to  say 
that  their  previous  knowledge  and  appreciation  of  Him 
evoked  it  in  their  minds.  It  was  no  coming  to  life  again 
in  memory  of  the  dear  familiar  friend  whom  even  death 
could  not  dislodge  from  the  heart;  it  was  something 
transcendently  and  unimaginably  new,  and  it  needs  a 
cause  proportioned  to  it  to  explain  its  presence. 

To  say  that  the  testimony  to  the  resurrection  is  mor- 
ally qualified  by  the  mere  fact  that  it  is  the  resurrec- 
tion of  Jesus  which  is  attested  does  not  exhaust  the 
truth.  The  apostles  did  not  preach  the  resurrection  of 
Jesus  itself  as  a  mere  fact;  what  they  preached  was  the 
gospel  of  the  resurrection.  It  was  the  fact  read  out  to  the 
mind,  heart,  and  conscience  of  men  in  its  divine  signif- 
icance— the  fact  and  its  interpretation  as  indissolubly 
one,  and  constituting  a  supreme  appeal  on  the  part  of 
God  to  man.  If  we  could  imagine  a  person  to  whom 
all  the  ideas  and  experiences  which  for  the  first  witnesses 
were  part  and  parcel  of  their  faith  in  the  exaltation  of 
Jesus  were  meaningless  or  unreal;  a  person  who  had  no 
interest  in  the"  forgiveness  of  sins  or  in  judgment  to 
come;  to  whom  a  life  like  that  of  Jesus,  ending  in  a 
death -like  His,  presented  no  problem,  or  none  that  much 
disturbed  his  soul;  to  whom  it  was  not  a  matter  of  any 
8 


ii4  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

moment  to  be  assured  that  sin  and  death  were  not  the 
final  realities  in  the  universe,  but  were  destined  to  be 
swallowed  up  in  victory — if  one  could  imagine  such 
a  person,  we  should  have  imagined  one  to  whom  the 
resurrection  must  be  permanently  incredible.  He  could 
not  believe  it,  because,  to  begin  with,  he  could  not  even 
conceive  it.  He  could  have  no  idea  of  what  those  who 
attested  it  had  in  their  minds;  and  even  if  he  accepted 
something  which  did  not  transcend  his  conception  of 
the  'purely'  historical,  some  bare  fact  with  none  but  a 
metaphysical  significance,  it  would  not  amount  to  believ- 
ing in  the  resurrection  in  the  sense  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. No  one  can  really  appreciate  the  testimony 
unless  the  moral  conditions  under  which  its  meaning  is 
realised  are  to  some  extent  real  for  him. 

It  is  possible,  as  has  been  already  noticed,  to  carica- 
ture this  truth  on  the  one  side,  and  to  abuse  it  on  the 
other.  Those  who  reject  the  resurrection  caricature  it 
when  they  say  that  it  is  a  mere  evasion,  an  attempt  to 
prove  what  is  either  a  historical  fact  or  nothing  by  evi- 
dence which  is  not  historical  at  all;  and  those  who  ac- 
cept the  resurrection  abuse  it  when  they  presume  to 
judge  others  on  the  ground  of  it,  and  insinuate  that  their 
unbelieving  attitude  is  due  to  their  insensibility  to  the 
spiritual  truths  which  the  gospel  of  the  resurrection 
embodies.  But  when  we  bring  into  view  the  fact  that 
the  testimony  to  the  resurrection  is  morally  qualified  in 
the  way  which  has  just  been  described,  we  do  not  dis- 
regard the  testimony  itself.  The  primary  fact  is  that  we 
have  such  testimony.  There  were  really  men  in  the 
world  who  stood  forth  before  their  fellows  and  said  'We 
»  have  seen  the  Lord.'  That  is  fundamental,  and  must 
always  be  so.  There  is  no  attempt  to  make  inward 
evidence  take  the  place  of  outward — no  argument  that 
the  witness  of  the  Spirit,  as  theologians  have  called  it, 


THE  RESURRECTION  115 

can  establish  a  historical  fact;  what  is  asserted  is  that  the 
historical  testimony  to  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  is  testi- 
mony to  a  fact  of  moral  significance,  a  fact  of  such  a  kind 
that  the  testimony  to  it  cannot  be  duly  appreciated,  even 
in  respect  to  its  credibility,  by  a  person  for  whom  its 
moral  significance  has  no  interest.  This  is  not  a  way  of 
asserting  that  the  resurrection  is  historical,  and  at  the 
same  time  securing  it  against  historical  criticism;  it  is 
only  pointing  out,  what  is  surely  the  case,  that  the  his- 
torical fact  with  which  we  are  here  concerned  must 
be  taken  as  what  the  historical  witnesses  represent  it  to 
be,  and  not  as  something  different — as  the  concrete  and 
significant  reality  which  it  was  for  them,  and  not  as  an 
abstract  and  isolated  somewhat,  which  has  no  significance 
whatever.  Perhaps  if  'man'  could  be  reduced  to  'his- 
torian' or  'natural  philosopher'  the  resurrection  might 
remain  for  ever  a  mere  puzzle  to  the  brain;  all  that  the 
considerations  with  which  we  are  here  concerned  import 
is  that  this  reduction  is  impossible.  'Man'  is  more 
than  'natural  philosopher'  or  'historian.'  His  relations 
to  reality  are  more  various  and  complex  than  those  of 
such  scientific  abstractions,  and,  therefore,  his  power  of 
responding  to  it,  of  apprehending  and  comprehending  it, 
is  greater.  Neither  nature  nor  history  is  invaded  in  its 
rights  by  the  resurrection,  but  both  are  transcended. 
Neither  natural  science  nor  history  can  deny  the  resur- 
rection except  by  claiming  for  themselves  to  exhaust  the 
truth  and  reality  of  the  universe — a  claim  the  untruth 
of  which  is  self-evident.  It  is  just  because  of  its  moral 
significance — because  of  its  meaning  and  purpose  in  the 
relations  of  God  and  man — that  the  resurrection,  as  the 
apostles  preached  it,  rises  above  what  is  called  the  purely 
historical;  it  makes  a  kind  of  appeal  to  men  which  a 
purely  historical  event,  if  we  could  realise  such  an  ab- 
straction,  never   makes;   it   is   on   our   susceptibility   to 


n6  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

this  appeal  that  our  appreciation  of  the  testimony  to  it 
depends,  and  yet  the  testimony  itself,  in  the  last  resort, 
is  historical  testimony.  There  would  be  nothing  to  go 
upon  whatever  if  there  were  not  men  who  had  seen  the 
risen  Jesus — here  is  the  point  of  attachment  with  history; 
but  what  the  testimony  of  these  men  shall  amount  to  for 
us — what  weight  it  shall  have  in  our  minds — whether  we 
shall  take  it  as  simply  as  it  is  given,  or  feel  ourselves 
obliged  to  attempt  the  reduction  of  it  to  something  by 
which  the  equilibrium  of  our  world  shall  be  maintained 
and  disturbing  revelations  excluded — here  is  the  point 
at  which  the  moral  elements  in  the  case  exert  their 
legitimate  influence.  To  see  this  and  to  say  it  is  not  to 
be  Pharisaical,  even  if  one  believes  in  the  resurrection. 
It  gives  no  right  to  judge  others.  It  is  necessary,  how- 
ever, that  the  preacher  of  the  resurrection  should  be 
conscious  of  it,  otherwise  he  may  preach  something 
which  is  out  of  touch  with  the  apostolic  gospel  of  the 
Risen  Christ — something  which  attempts  more  than  the 
first  witnesses  attempted,  a  demonstration  of  the  fact 
apart  from  its  significance;  something,  too,  which  is  less 
interesting  than  their  message,  a  fact  so  emptied  of 
divine  and  human  meaning  that  it  defies  the  intelligence 
instead  of  appealing  to  the  whole  man. 

About  the  third  way  in  which  the  evidence  for  the 
resurrection  is  morally  qualified  there  can  hardly  be  any 
dispute.  If  the  alleged  fact  had  been  insulated  in  hu- 
man history,  if  it  had  been  ineffective  and  fruitless,  it 
might  well  have  been  questioned  whether  it  were  a  fact 
at  all.  But  from  the  very  beginning  men  were  per- 
suaded that  the  resurrection  was  a  fact,  because  they 
saw  it  operate  as  a  moral  power.  It  has  been  said  al- 
ready that  the  supreme  evidence  for  the  resurrection  is 
the  existence  of  the  Church  in  the  fulness  of  that  ex- 
uberant life  which  we  see  in  the  apostolic  writings.     And 


THE  RESURRECTION  117 

this  was  understood  from  the  first.  The  sermon  of 
Peter  in  Acts  2  is  conscious  of  all  the  moral  qualifications 
which  we  have  reviewed.  The  primary  historical  fact 
of  course  is  that  the  Lord  had  appeared  to  Peter  and 
those  for  whom  he  spoke:  they  were  witnesses  of  His 
resurrection.  But  Peter  knew  the  weight  which  his 
word  would  receive  from  his  appreciation  of  the  character 
of  Jesus:  'it  was  not  possible  that  He  should  be  holden 
of  death.'  He  knew  the  added  power  with  which  it 
would  tell  when  the  Risen  Christ  was  preached  at  the 
author  of  reconciliation  to  God :  '  repent  and  be  baptized 
every  one  of  you  in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  for  remission 
of  your  sins.'  He  knew  that  he  gave  conclusive  evidence 
of  the  exaltation  of  Jesus  when  he  pointed  to  the  spiritual 
phenomena  of  the  early  Christian  days:  'He  hath  poured 
forth  this  which  ye  both  see  and  hear.'  We  must  not 
narrow  unduly  the  application  of  the  last  words.  If  we 
thought  of  nothing  but  speaking  with  tongues,  and  took 
our  ideas  of  this  from  Paul,  we  should  probably  not 
rate  it  very  high.  But  'this  that  ye  both  see  and  hear' 
covers  the  whole  phenomena  of  that  eventful  time. 
The  wonder  of  it  was  not  that  the  apostles  spoke  in 
foreign  languages,  but  that  they  spoke;  men  who  had 
till  then  been  silent  or  rather  dumb  opened  their  lips, 
and  preached  with  tongues  of  fire.  With  great  power 
they  gave  their  testimony  to  the  resurrection  of  the 
Lord  Jesus.  This  is  the  truly  significant  thing,  the 
transformation  of  the  apostles  and  the  birth  of  the  Church. 
What  we  think  of  the  apostolic  testimony  to  the  resur- 
rection cannot  but  be  influenced  by  our  estimate  of 
these  moral  phenomena  and  of  the  mode  of  their  causa- 
tion. The  greater  they  appear,  the  more  valuable 
in  their  spiritual  contents,  the  more  decisive  in  the  his- 
tory of  humanity,  so  much  the  more  inevitable  must 
it  seem  that  what  lies  behind  them  is  not  an  illusion 


n8  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

or  a  morbid  experience  misunderstood,  but  the  highest 
reality  and  truth  which  have  ever  told  with  re- 
generating power  on  the  life  of  man.  Yet  here  again 
a  straightforward  mind  is  bound  to  guard  the  argument 
from  reproach  by  making  it  quite  clear  that  there  is  no 
desire  to  evade  any  historical  issue.  There  are  historical 
witnesses:  to  that  we  must  always  recur.  The  moral 
phenomena  to  which  reference  has  been  made  are  trans- 
acted on  the  stage  of  history.  But  something  in  our 
appreciation  of  the  witnesses  will  always  depend  on  our 
appreciation  of  the  moral  phenomena;  and  it  is  not 
scientific  conscientiousness,  but  philosophical  perversity, 
which  tries  to  ignore  the  obvious  truth.  Surely  it  only 
needs  to  be  stated  that  the  man  to  whom  Christian 
history  and  the  New  Testament  life  are  the  divinest 
things  he  can  conceive,  and  the  man  to  whom  they  are 
meaningless  or  even  pathological  phenomena,  must  take 
different  views  of  what  their  earliest  representatives 
attest  as  their  cause.  In  this  sense,  it  is  fair  enough  to 
say  that  belief  in  the  resurrection  is  a  value- judgment. 
But  it  is  not  implied,  when  the  word  is  used  in  this  sense, 
that  the  resurrection  never  took  place,  and  that  we  can- 
not speak  of  historical  evidence  in  connexion  with  it. 

It  is  well  worth  remarking  that  in  the  earliest  great 
discussion  of  this  subject — that  in  the  first  epistle  to  the 
Corinthians — Paul  does  justice  to  both  the  historical  and 
the  spiritual  evidence  for  the  resurrection,  and  sets  the 
two  in  their  proper  relation  to  each  other.  The  histori- 
cal evidence  comes  first.  'He  appeared  to  Peter,  then 
to  the  Twelve  ...  He  appeared  to  me  also.'  It  cannot 
be  repeated  too  often  that  this  is  fundamental.  If  there 
had  not  been  men  who  could  say  this,  there  would  never 
have  been  such  a  thing  in  the  world  as  Christian  life, 
with  the  evidence  for  the  resurrection  which  it  brings. 
Unless  the   apostolic  testimony   among  men,   supported 


THE   RESURRECTION  119 

as  it  was  by  the  spiritual  power  with  which  it  was  de- 
livered,   had    commanded    faith,    the    Christian   religion 
could  never  have  come  to  be.     There  is  the  exaggera- 
tion of  paradox  in  a  saying  like  Mr.  Inge's1  that  're- 
ligion, when  it  confines  itself  strictly  to  its  own  province, 
never  speaks  in  the  past  tense.     It   is  concerned  only 
with  what  is,  not  with  what  was.     History  as  history  is 
not  its  business.'     Paul  spoke  in  the  past  tense  when  he 
said,  'He  appeared  unto  me.'     If  we  drop  what  was  out 
of  what  is,  how  much  is  left  ?     The  true  case  of  any  one 
who  believes  in  the  resurrection  is  not  that  'history  as 
history'  is  not  the  business  of  religion;  but  that,  as  Paul 
says   about  older   idols,   'history  as   history'   is  nothing 
in   the   world.     If   Jesus   actually  rose,   as   Paul   attests 
on  the  ground  that  He  appeared  to  him  in  His  exalta- 
tion, we  may  require  to  enlarge  our  conception  of  the 
historical,  but  we  cannot  say  that  religion  and  history 
are  independent  of  each  other.     This  is  very  far  from 
the  mind  of  Paul.     The  apostle  never  argues  that  'the 
real  basis  of  our  belief  in  the  resurrection  of  Christ  is 
a    great    psychological    fact — a    spiritual    experience.' 2 
The  resurrection  must  certainly  be  attested,  if  it  is  to 
win  faith,  by  witnesses  like  Peter  and  Paul  who  have 
been    spiritually    transformed    by    it;    if    the    appearing 
of  Jesus  had  made  no  difference  to  them,  if  it  had  left 
them   the   men   they   were   before,   no   one   would   have 
believed  them  when  they  told  He  had  appeared.     But 
testimony   does   not   cease   to  be   testimony  when   it   is 
delivered  by  men  who  have  been  themselves  transformed 
by  what  they  attest.     The  truth  does  not  cease  to  be 
independently  true  when  its  power  is  demonstrated   in 
its  moral  workings,  and  we  must  take  care  that  the  desire 
to  put  Christianity  on  a  basis  independent  of  history,  a 

1  In  Contentio  Veritatis,  p.  90. 

2  Inge,  ut  supra,  p.  87. 


i2o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

basis  beyond  the  reach  of  historical  doubt,  does  not  lead 
us  to  withdraw  from  under  it  the  only  basis  on  which  it 
has  ever  been  sustained. 

Premising  this,  however,  it  is  of  extreme  interest  to 
notice  how  Paul  adds  to  the  direct  historical  testimony 
for  the  resurrection  an  indirect  spiritual  evidence  which 
in  its  place  is  of  the  highest  value.  To  put  it  broadly, 
Christian  experience  in  all  its  forms  implies  the  resur- 
rection. State  the  content  of  this  experience  as  you 
will,  take  any  aspect  or  illustration  of  it  you  please,  and 
if  you  deny  the  resurrection,  instead  of  being  the  highest 
and  truest  form  of  human  life,  such  experience  must  be 
considered  a  thing  illegitimate,  abnormal,  delusive.  All 
through  his  argument  Paul  employs  the  reductio  ad 
absurdum.  At  first  he  states  his  case  quite  indefinitely: 
'if  Christ  is  not  risen,  then  our  preaching  is  vain,  and 
your  faith  is  vain  too'  (i  Cor.  15  14).  Vain,  xsvdv,  means 
empty,  with  nothing  in  it.  Whatever  is  to  be  said  of 
Paul's  preaching,  we  surely  cannot  say  this.  A  nature 
so  powerful  and  passionate  as  his  cannot  be  raised  to 
the  most  intense  action,  and  sustained  in  it  through  life, 
by  that  which  has  nothing  in  it.  A  preaching  that  so 
stimulated  the  intelligence  of  the  preacher  himself,  that 
put  the  irresistible  constraint  on  him  which  he  so  often 
describes,1  that  carried  away  the  auditors  as  it  swept 
upon  them  '  in  power  and  in  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  in  much 
assurance'  (1  Thess.  1 5)  must  have  had  something  in  it. 
It  must  have  had  behind  it  a  power  corresponding  in 
character  and  in  force  to  the  effects  which  it  produced 
both  in  the  apostle  and  his  audience;  and  that  power, 
as  Paul  apprehended  it,  was  the  power  of  the  Risen 
Saviour.  But  the  apostle  proceeds  to  give  a  more  special 
point  to  this  general  truth.  '  If  Christ  is  not  raised,  your 
faith  is  vain,  ye  are  yet  in  your  sins.'  Vain  is  in  this 
1  See  1  Cor.  9  16,  2  Cor.  5  13f-,  Acts  18  5— this  last  also  at  Corinth. 


THE  RESURRECTION  121 

place  fiarata,  not  xevrj,  futile  or  to  no  purpose,  rather 
than  having  nothing  in  it.  Your  faith  means  your 
Christianity,  your  new  religion.  The  great  blessing  it 
has  brought  you  is,  as  you  imagine,  reconciliation  to 
God;  as  believers,  you  are  no  longer  in  your  sins;  in 
the  consciousness  of  reconciliation  to  God  they  are 
annulled  both  in  their  guilt  and  in  their  power;  the  re- 
generative pardon  of  God  in  Christ  has  made  you  new 
creatures.  But  this  regenerative  pardon  is  the  par- 
don of  God  in  Christ:  it  is  preached  to  men  in  the  Risen 
Lord  who  died  for  sin,  and  who  sends  His  spirit  to  those 
who  believe  in  Him;  apart  from  this  Risen  Lord  it  has 
no  legitimacy,  no  reality  at  all.  But  who  will  dare 
to  say  that  the  consciousness  of  reconciliation  to  God, 
which  is  the  essence  of  all  Christian  experience,  the 
inspiration  of  all  Christian  praise,  the  spring  of  all  Chris- 
tian life,  is  no  more  than  an  illusion?  To  Christians, 
at  all  events,  it  is  more  real  than  anything  else  which 
human  beings  call  reality,  and  its  reality  stands  and  falls 
with  that  of  the  resurrection.  There  may  be  morbid 
phenomena  in  the  Christian  life,  as  in  life  on  every  plane, 
and  no  doubt  there  are;  but  to  say  that  the  Christian 
life  itself,  in  that  which  is  most  intimately  characteristic 
of  it,  is  nothing  but  a  morbid  phenomenon,  is  too  much. 
At  all  events  it  was  too  much  for  Paul.  For  him  the 
doxologies  in  which  men  who  were  no  longer  in  their 
sins  celebrated  the  living  Lord  who  had  redeemed  them 
were  not  wild  and  whirling  words:  they  were  the  only 
words  in  which  utterance  was  given  to  the  final  truth  of 
life. 

And  he  has  still  other  ways  in  which  he  can  press  his 
case.  If  Christ  is  not  risen,  'then  they  also  who  have 
fallen  asleep  in  Christ  are  perished.'  Paul  had  seen 
men  fall  asleep  in  Christ.  He  had  watched  Stephen  stoned, 
and  heard  him  cry,  'Lord  Jesus,  receive  my  spirit.'     He 


122  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

had  seen  our  poor  human  nature,  in  mortal  weakness,  lay 
hold  of  the  immortal  love  of  God  in  Christ,  and  through 
faith  in  Him  triumph  over  the  last  enemy.  He  be- 
lieved that  there  was  nothing  on  earth  so  priceless  as 
such  faith,  nothing  so  real  and  so  honouring  to  God. 
He  could  not  believe  that  it  was  in  vain.  God  would 
be  ashamed  of  such  people,  to  be  called  their  God,  unless 
their  hope  of  immortality  was  made  good.  He  would 
be  unworthy  of  their  trust.  But  such  hope  was  inspired 
by  the  resurrection  of  Jesus;  it  is  only  through  the  res- 
urrection it  can  be  satisfied;  and  therefore  for  Paul 
who  so  judges,  and  for  all  who  share  his  appreciation  of 
the  dying  Christian's  faith,  the  resurrection  is  as  certain 
as  the  fidelity  of  God  to  those  who  trust  Him  even  in 
death.  The  final  turn  which  the  apostle  gives  to  his 
argument  has  been  much  censured  by  superior  moralists: 
'if  in  this  life  only  we  have  hoped  in  Christ,  we  are  of 
all  men  most  miserable.'  The  enlightened  multitude 
which  has  advanced  so  far  as  to  know  that  virtue  is  its 
own  reward  has  been  very  severe  upon  this.  A  man, 
we  are  told,  ought  to  live  the  highest  life  quite  irrespective 
of  whether  there  is  a  life  beyond  or  not.  It  is  hardly 
profitable,  however,  to  discuss  the  kind  of  life  a  man  will 
live  quite  irrespective  of  conditions.  Life  is  determined 
by  the  kind  of  motives  which  enter  into  it.  If  a  man 
believes  as  Paul  did  in  the  Risen  Christ  and  in  the  im- 
mortal life  beyond  death,  motives  from  that  sphere  of 
reality  will  enter  into  his  life  here,  and  give  it  a  new 
character;  and  it  will  be  time  enough  to  disparage  the 
morality  of  this  verse  when  we  find  the  people  who  dis- 
pense with  the  apostolic  motive  leading  the  apostolic 
life.  That  man  would  be  of  all  men  most  miserable  who 
ran  a  race  for  a  hope  set  before  him,  and  found  when  he 
had  reached  the  goal  that  he  himself  and  the  hope  and 
all  that  had  inspired  him  crumbled  into  dust.     It  is  in 


THE  RESURRECTION  123 

the  same  temper  that  the  apostle  writes  immediately 
afterwards:  'If  after  the  manner  of  men  I  fought  with 
beasts  at  Ephesus,  what  doth  it  profit  me?  If  the  dead 
are  not  raised,  let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we 
die.'  This  is  not  a  childish  petulance,  as  if  he  had  said, 
'I  will  not  be  good  unless  I  get  to  heaven';  it  is  rather 
the  passionate  expression  of  the  feeling  that  if  goodness 
and  all  that  is  identified  with  it  is  not  finally  victorious 
— in  a  word,  is  not  eternal — there  is  no  such  thing  as 
goodness  at  all.  If  life  is  bounded  by  time,  men  will 
live  in  one  way;  if  it  has  an  outlook  beyond  death,  they 
will  live  in  another  way,  for  the  range  and  balance  of 
their  motives  will  be  different.  Paul  is  concerned  about 
the  Corinthian  denial  of  the  resurrection,  because  it 
seems  to  him  to  spring  from  a  moral  preference  for  the 
limited  view  and  the  narrower  range  of  motives,  a  pref- 
erence by  which  life  is  inevitably  degraded.  He  does 
not  argue  that  a  man  who  rejects  the  resurrection  is  a 
bad  man,  sensual  or  petty  in  his  morals,  but  he  does 
assume  that  the  mind  of  a  bad  man,  whether  it  be  sensual 
or  only  small,  is  weighted  against  the  evidence  for  the 
resurrection;  and  in  that  he  is  undoubtedly  right.  Such 
a  man  does  not  so  easily  see  or  sympathize  with  the 
meaning  of  the  resurrection;  he  does  not  relish  what  it 
stands  for,  and  is  so  far  disqualified  from  doing  justice 
to  the  evidence  on  which  it  rests. 

It  is  not  possible  to  present  the  various  ways  in  which 
the  evidence  for  the  resurrection  is  morally  qualified 
without  saying  or  assuming  things  which  to  some  minds 
will  seem  unfair.  But  this  seeming  unfairness  is  not  to 
be  imputed  to  the  person  who  presents  the  case;  it  is 
involved  in  the  necessities  of  every  case  in  which  moral 
considerations  come  into  play.  If  a  man  can  easily 
assume  that  the  Christian  consciousness  of  reconciliation 
to  God,  the  Christian  hope  of  immortality,  the  Christian 


i24  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

devotion  of  the  apostolic  life,  are  things  which  have  no 
proper  place  in  the  moral  experience  of  human  beings; 
if  it  is  easy  for  him  to  argue  that  they  must  be  eliminated, 
reduced  or  discounted  somehow,  to  bring  the  mind  to 
moral  sanity;   if  he  can  seriously  think  that  the  New 
Testament  is  no  more  than  the  wonderful  monument  of 
an  immense  delusion,  he  will  not  easily  be  persuaded  to 
believe   in   the   resurrection   of   Jesus.     Not   that   he   is 
invited  to  believe  in  it  on  the  ground  of  these  moral 
phenomena,  in  the  appreciation  of  which  men  may  con- 
ceivably differ.     But  with  these  phenomena  present  to 
his  mind,  or  rather,  as  we  must  say  of  all  moral  pheno- 
mena, to  his  conscience — with  some  sense  of  the  character 
of  Jesus,  with  some  perception  of  the  gospel  of  the  resur- 
rection,   the   appeal   which    God   makes   through   it   to 
sinful  man,  with  some  knowledge  of  what  it  has  pro- 
duced in  human  life — he  is  invited  to  accept  the  testimony 
of  witnesses  who  say,  'We  have  seen  the  Lord.'     It  is  the 
whole   of   this   complex  of   facts   taken   together   which 
constitutes   the   evidence   for   the   resurrection;   and   the 
moral  qualifications  of  it,  which  the  writer  has  tried  to 
explain,  may  be  said  at  once  to  impair  and  to  strengthen 
its  appeal.     They  impair  it  for  those  whose  estimate  of 
the  moral  phenomena  involved  is  low;  they  strengthen 
it  for  those  whose  estimate  of  these  phenomena  is  high. 
If  there  were  no  such  phenomena  at  all — if  the  alleged 
resurrection  of  Jesus  were  an  insulated  somewhat,  with 
neither    antecedents    nor    consequences — no    one    could 
believe  it;  that  which  has  neither  relations  nor  results 
does  not  exist.     But  the  mere  fact  that  the  phenomena 
with   which   the   alleged   resurrection   is  bound   up   are 
moral  phenomena,  which  will  be  differently  appreciated 
by  different  men,  makes  it  impossible  to  give  a  demon- 
stration of  it  as  we  give  a  demonstration  in  mathematics 
or  in  natural  science.     As  far  as  demonstration  can  be 


THE  RESURRECTION  125 

given  in  history,  it  is  given  by  the  word  of  credible  and 
competent  witnesses  like  Peter  and  Paul.  No  historian 
questions  that  Paul  had  the  experience  which  he  de- 
scribed as  seeing  the  Lord;  the  open  question  is,  what 
is  the  worth  of  the  experience  which  he  so  describes? 
Was  it  an  illusion?  was  it  the  accompaniment  of  an 
epileptic  fit?  was  it  a  self -begotten  vision  of  an  over- 
heated brain?  Or  was  it  a  real  manifestation  of  the 
exalted  Lord,  with  all  the  significance  which  Paul  dis- 
covered in  it?  There  is  no  value  in  an  offhand  answer 
prescribed  by  the  general  view  of  what  is  or  is  not  possible 
in  nature  or  in  history.  The  only  answer  which  has 
value  is  that  which  takes  into  account,  first,  the  con- 
firmation—if there  be  such  a  thing— of  the  testimony  of 
Paul  by  that  of  other  witnesses;  and  second,  the  other 
realities  of  experience  which  stand  in  necessary  relation 
to  the  alleged  fact.  It  is  on  its  estimate  of  this  evidence 
as  a  whole  that  the  Christian  Church  has  since  the  be- 
ginning based  its  faith  in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus,  and  the 
writer  cannot  feel  that  any  philosophy  or  criticism  has  di- 
minished in  the  least  its  convincing  and  persuasive  power. 
To  present  the  evidence  for  the  resurrection  in  this 
way  will  not  surprise  those  who  have  thought  about  the 
subject.  The  broad  facts  on  which  the  certainty  of  it 
rests  are  that  it  is  attested  by  men  who  declare  that 
Jesus  appeared  to  them,  and  that  it  stands  in  such  relation 
to  other  realities  as  guarantees  that  it  is  itself  real.  Of 
course  this  leaves  a  great  many  questions  unanswered. 
It  does  not  tell  us  anything  we  can  realise  as  to  the  mode 
of  being  in  which  Jesus  appeared:  it  does  not  enable 
us  to  interpret  the  appearances  scientifically,  and  to 
relate  the  Risen  Saviour  to  the  constitution  and  course 
of  nature  with  which  we  are  familiar.  The  original 
witnesses  like  Paul  never  bring  Him  back  into  this 
world,  so  as  to  be  a  part  of  it  as  He  was  before  death; 


126  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

His  appearing  is  the  revelation  of  a  transcendent  life, 
and  of  another  world  which  eludes  the  resources  of 
physical  science.  But  it  is  on  the  broad  foundation  of 
the  certainty  which  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  had  for 
Paul,  and  which  it  has  for  all  who  accept  the  primitive 
testimony  in  the  large  scope  given  to  it  above,  that  we 
have  to  investigate  such  narratives  of  the  appearings  of 
Jesus,  and  of  His  intercourse  with  His  disciples,  as  we 
find  in  the  synoptic  gospels  and  the  book  of  Acts. 
Though  we  should  find  these  full  of  difficulties  which 
elude  all  attempts  at  explanation — nay,  though  there 
should  turn  out  to  be  features  in  them  to  which  we  could 
not  assign  any  historical  value — our  faith  in  the  resur- 
rection, firmly  established  beforehand  on  its  proper  basis, 
would  not  be  disturbed.  We  should  know  less  than  we 
thought  we  did  about  how  the  resurrection  life  was  mani- 
fested, but  we  should  be  as  sure  as  ever  that  the  mani- 
festation was  made,  and  that  is  all  in  which  we  are 
concerned. 

The  strict  sequence  of  the  argument,  therefore,  does 
not  require  us  to  enter  into  such  details,  but  they  have 
been  so  prominent  in  most  discussions  of  the  resurrec- 
tion that  it  is  worth  while  to  refer  to  them  in  passing. 
The  principal  difficulties  have  been  found  in  connexion 
with  three  features  in  the  narratives.  The  first  concerns 
the  sequence  of  the  appearances  of  Jesus;  the  second, 
the  progressive  materialising,  or  what  is  alleged  to  be 
such,  in  the  representations  of  the  Risen  One;  and  the 
third,  the  place  of  His  appearing. 

As  for  the  first,  it  has  to  be  frankly  admitted  that  no 
one  has  ever  succeeded  in  constructing  a  harmony  which 
combines  without  inconsistency  or  contradiction  all  that 
we  read  in  the  Gospels,  in  Acts,  and  in  ist  Corinthians, 
on  this  subject.  He  who  wishes  to  see  the  best  case 
that  can  be  stated  for  the  accuracy  and  credibility  of  the 


THE   RESURRECTION  127 

New  Testament  witnesses  may  find  it  in  the  Essay  of 
Dr.  Chase1;  he  who  wishes  to  see  the  strongest  case 
that  can  be  made  against  them  may  consult  Schmiedel's 
article  in  the  Encyclopedia  Biblica. 2  Whether  the  time 
over  which  these  appearings  extended  were  longer  or 
shorter — and  everything  in  the  New  Testament  favours 
the  idea  that  it  was  comparatively  short — it  must  have 
been  a  time  of  intense  excitement  for  all  concerned.  The 
agitation  of  the  actors,  their  emotions,  their  amazement, 
incredulity,  fear,  joy,  are  vividly  reflected  in  the  stories. 
If  their  depositions  had  been  taken  on  oath  immediately 
afterwards,  it  is  certain  that  discrepancies  in  detail  would 
have  appeared;  but  no  one  who  knows  what  evidence  is 
would  maintain  that  discrepancies  of  this  kind  discredit 
the  main  fact  which  is  attested.  We  do  not  know  how 
soon  accounts  of  the  resurrection  appearances  of  Jesus 
began  to  be  put  on  record;  but,  as  has  been  already  ob- 
served, the  gospels  as  we  have  them  were  not  written 
till  after  the  death  of  Paul,  and  it  was  too  late  then  to 
find  out  with  any  precision  how  this  or  that  appearing 
preserved  in  tradition  was  related  in  time  to  the  others. 
The  series  in  1st  Corinthians  xv.  is  no  doubt  chrono- 
logical, but  it  does  not  profess  to  be  complete,  and  it 
leaves  us  perfectly  free  to  combine  other  appearances 
with  those  it  records  as  best  we  can.  One  of  the  great- 
est difficulties  connected  with  the  temporal  aspect  of  the 
resurrection  is  that  which  rises  out  of  the  apparent  incon- 
sistency of  one  and  the  same  writer — the  author  of  the 
third  gospel  and  of  Acts.  The  first  impression  left  upon 
the  mind  by  the  gospel  is  that  it  was  on  the  day  of  the 
resurrection  itself  that  Jesus  appeared  to  the  two  dis- 
ciples on  His  way  to  Emmaus,  to  Peter,  and  to  the  com- 
pany in   Jerusalem;   and  that  on  that  same  day,   after 

1  Cambridge  Theological  Essays. 

2  Resurrection  and  Ascension  Narratives,  vol.  iv.  4039  ff. 


128  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

giving  this  company  His  final  charge,  He  led  them  out 
to  Bethany  and  there  parted  from  them  with  blessing 
(and  ascended  into  heaven).  But  this,  notoriously,  is 
not  what  we  find  in  Acts.  There  the  parting  and  the 
ascension  at  Bethany  do  not  take  place  till  six  weeks 
after  the  resurrection.  It  is  not  easy  to  believe  that 
Luke,  in  writing  the  sequel  to  his  gospel  which  he  had 
in  view  from  the  beginning,  which  is  indeed  only  the 
second  chapter  of  the  same  work,  and  which  was  in  all 
probability  produced  continuously  with  it,  was  conscious 
of  any  such  inconsistency  in  his  own  mind.  He  did  not 
write  for  people  who  knew  nothing  of  his  story,  but  for 
a  circle — for  his  work  was  never  intended  for  Theophilus 
alone — which  was  acquainted  with  him  and  the  tradition 
he  represented;  and  not  to  insist  on  the  fact  that  a  day 
of  impossible  length  would  be  required  to  take  in  all  the 
events  of  the  last  chapter  of  the  gospel,  the  probabilities 
are  that  its  earliest  readers,  who  may  never  have  read  it 
apart  from  Acts,  knew  that  its  closing  section  was  essen- 
tially an  abridgment  or  summary,  and  that  whether  it  was 
to  be  interrupted  at  this  point  or  that — after  ver.  43  or 
after  ver.  49 — it  covered  a  much  longer  period  than  twelve 
or  eighteen  hours.  There  is  much  to  be  said  for  the 
idea  that  in  the  last  verses  of  the  gospel  Luke  condenses 
into  a  few  lines  what  he-  is  able  in  the  opening  of  Acts 
to  expand  in  some  detail,  just  as  in  the  last  verses  of 
Acts  he  condenses  into  a  sentence  two  whole  years  of 
Paul's  preaching  in  Rome,  which  he  would  have  expanded 
in  a  third  book  had  he  been  able  to  bring  his  history 
of  Christianity  down  to  a  provisional  termination  with 
the  fall  of  Jerusalem  and  the  death  of  his  two  great 
figures,  Peter  and  Paul.  But  however  this  may  be, 
no  chronological  difficulty  impairs  in  the  slightest  de- 
gree the  value  of  the  testimony  to  the  resurrection  on 
which  faith  has  rested  from  the  first.     We  see  how  such 


THE   RESURRECTION  129 

difficulties  would  arise;  we  see  how  inevitably  they  must 
have  arisen;  and  seeing  this  we  know  how  to  discount 
them. 

Many  have  felt  the  second  class  of  difficulties  more 
serious — those  arising  out  of  the  progressive  materialisa- 
tion of  the  appearances  of  Jesus.  At  first,  it  is  said,  He 
only  appears;  and  the  visionary  reality  of  an  appearance 
is  not  to  be  disputed.  Appearances  do  appear,  however 
they  are  to  be  interpreted.  It  is  a  step  further  when  the 
appearance  speaks.  Still,  speaking  is  only  the  counter- 
part of  hearing,  and  as  hearing  may  be  as  inward  and 
subjective  as  seeing,  the  speaking  also  may  be  allowed  to 
pass  as  a  way  of  representing  one  aspect  of  the  experi- 
ence. This,  it  may  be  said,  is  all  the  length  we  are 
carried  by  Paul.  He  saw  the  Lord,  and  the  Lord  spoke 
to  him,  but  there  is  nothing  materialistic  in  this.  He 
does,  indeed,  speak  of  His  body,  but  it  is  the  body  of  His 
glory  (Phil.  3  21) — that  incorruptible  spiritual  body  into 
the  likeness  of  which  He  will  change  the  body  of  our 
humiliation;  not  a  body  of  flesh  and  blood,  which  cannot 
inherit  the  Kingdom  of  God.  We  might  conceive  the 
Risen  Saviour  saying  to  Thomas,  'Reach  hither  thy 
finger  and  see  My  hands;  and  reach  hither  thy  hand  and 
put  it  into  My  side;  and  be  not  faithless,  but  believing': 
we  might  conceive  this  in  consistency  with  Paul,  for  the 
body  of  His  glory  is  the  body  in  which  He  suffered, 
changed  as  we  shall  be  changed  when  this  corruptible  has 
put  on  incorruption.  But  can  we,  in  consistency  with 
Paul's  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  body,  conceive  Jesus 
saying,  '  Handle  Me  and  see,  for  a  spirit  hath  not  flesh 
and  bones  as  ye  behold  Me  having'?  Can  we  conceive 
that  He  took  a  piece  of  broiled  fish  and  ate  it  before  the 
disciples  (Luke  24 39"43)  ?  It  is  not  wanton  to  ask  such 
questions:  they  rise  involuntarily  in  the  mind,  and  we 
have  no  choice  but  to  face  them.  One  way  of  doing  so 
9 


i3o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

is  to  argue  that  the  only  reality  in  the  resurrection  stories 
is  that  of  visionary  appearances  of  Jesus,  and  that  every- 
thing else  in  the  gospel  record  is  to  be  explained  as  the 
effort  of  those  who  believed  in  these  appearances  to  per- 
suade others  to  believe  in  them — the  effort  to  exhibit 
them  as  so  indubitably  and  convincingly  real  that  no  one 
would  be  able  to  refuse  his  faith.  But  reality  for  the 
popular  mind  is  that  which  is  demonstrable  to  the  senses; 
it  is  material  reality;  and  hence  the  proof  of  the  resur- 
rection is  more  and  more  materialised.  The  first  step  in 
this  process  of  materialisation  is  the  introduction  of  the 
empty  grave:  the  real  proof  of  the  resurrection,  such  as 
it  is,  had  originally  nothing  to  do  with  the  grave;  it  was 
the  quiet  independent  fact  that  Jesus  had  appeared  be- 
yond the  grave.  To  the  empty  tomb  one  infallible  sign 
was  added  after  another — conversations,  the  hands  and 
the  side,  the  flesh  and  the  bones,  and  at  last  the  crudity 
of  eating  and  drinking.  It  is  a  strong  argument  against 
this  way  of  explaining  all  these  phenomena  that  if  this  be 
their  genesis,  it  has  left  no  trace  of  its  motive  in  the  New 
Testament.  The  empty  tomb  comes  before  us  only  as 
a  fact,  not  as  an  argument.  It  is  never  referred  to  as 
throwing  light  either  on  the  character  or  the  reality  of 
the  resurrection,  though  it  is  assumed,  of  course,  in 
Matthew  28,  that  if  the  Jews  had  been  able  to  produce 
the  body  of  Jesus  the  evidence  for  the  resurrection  would 
have  been  destroyed.  It  is  not  easy  to  dispute  this 
assumption.  The  confidence  of  the  disciples  in  their 
Master's  victory  over  death  could  not  be  without  relation 
to  His  victory  over  the  grave.  They  did  not  believe 
that  He  would  rise  again  at  the  last  day,  they  believed 
from  the  very  beginning  that  He  had  risen  again  already; 
and  it  is  merely  incredible  that  with  such  a  faith  inspiring 
them  they  never  so  much  as  thought  of  the  grave,  or  had 
not  a  moment  of  trouble  in  reconciling  to  their  belief  in 


THE  RESURRECTION  131 

the  resurrection  of  Jesus  the  demonstration  given  by  the 
grave,  if  His  body  still  lay  there,  that  He  too  saw  cor- 
ruption. The  empty  grave  is  not  the  product  of  a  naive 
apologetic  spirit,  a  spirit  not  content  with  the  evidence 
for  the  resurrection  contained  in  the  fact  that  the  Lord 
had  appeared  to  His  own  and  had  quickened  them  unto 
new  victorious  life;  it  is  not  the  first  stage  in  a  process 
which  aims  unconsciously  as  much  as  voluntarily  at 
making  the  evidence  palpable,  and  independent,  as  far  as 
may  be,  of  the  moral  qualifications  to  which  we  have 
already  adverted;  it  is  an  original,  independent  and  un- 
motived  part  of  the  apostolic  testimony.  The  whole 
mysteriousness  of  the  resurrection  is  in  it;  in  combina- 
tion with  the  appearances  of  Jesus,  and  with  all  that 
flowed  from  them,  it  brings  us  to  a  point  at  which  the 
resources  of  science  are  exhausted,  the  point  at  which  the 
transcendent  world  revealed  in  the  resurrection  touches 
this  world,  at  once  enlarging  the  mind  and  bringing  it  to 
a  stand.  This  mysteriousness  attaches  to  all  that  we  read 
in  the  gospels  of  the  appearances  of  Jesus — His  coming 
and  going,  His  form,  as  it  is  called  in  Mark  16  12,  His 
showing  of  His  hands  and  His  side;  but  whether  it  can 
be  extended  in  any  way  to  His  eating  may  well  seem 
doubtful.  Meats  for  the  belly  and  the  belly  for  meats, 
Paul  says,  and  God  shall  destroy  both  it  and  them. 
Eating  is  a  function  which  belongs  to  the  reality  of  this 
life,  but  not  to  that  of  immortality;  and  there  does  seem 
something  which  is  not  only  incongruous  but  repellent  in 
the  idea  of  the  Risen  Lord  eating.  It  makes  Him  real 
by  bringing  Him  back  to  earth  and  incorporating  Him 
again  in  this  life,  whereas  the  reality  of  which  His  res- 
urrection assures  us  is  not  that  of  this  life,  but  of  another 
life  transcending  this.  The  eating  is  only  mentioned 
by  Luke  (Gospel,  24 39  ff ,  Acts  1 4,  10 41),  and  when 
we  consider  the  fact,  which  a  comparison  with  the  other 


i32  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

gospels  renders  unquestionable,  that  Luke  everywhere 
betrays  a  tendency  to  materialise  the  supernatural,  it  is 
not  too  much  to  suppose  that  this  tendency  has  left 
traces  on  his  resurrection  narrative,  too.  But  though  we 
have  to  discount  this,  the  resurrection  itself,  as  the  reve- 
lation of  life  in  another  order,  is  not  touched.  It  only 
means  that  we  do  not  assign  to  the  resurrection  life, 
which  has  a  higher  reality  of  its  own,  that  same  kind  of 
reality,  with  all  its  material  conditions  and  limitations, 
with  which  we  are  familiar  in  this  world.  To  reject  the 
eating  is  not  to  reject  the  resurrection  life  of  Jesus,  it  is 
to  preserve  it  in  its  truth  as  a  revelation  of  life  at  a  new 
level — life  in  which  eating  and  drinking  are  as  inappro- 
priate as  marrying  or  giving  in  marriage. 

We  now  come  to  the  third  of  the  difficulties  con- 
nected with  the  gospel  narratives  of  the  resurrection, 
that  which  concerns  the  place  of  Jesus'  appearing.  If 
we  take  the  gospels  as  they  stand,  and  attempt  to  har- 
monise them,  we  may  think  at  first  that  there  are  suf- 
ficient facilities  for  doing  so.  If  in  Matthew  Jesus 
appears  to  His  disciples  only  in  Galilee,  and  in  Luke 
only  in  Jerusalem,  in  John  He  appears  to  them  in  both; 
and  it  may  seem  reasonable  to  apply  to  difficulties  about 
space  the  same  considerations  which  have  already  enabled 
us  to  discount  the  difficulties  about  time.  But  a  closer 
scrutiny  reveals  to  us  that  in  their  representation  of  the 
scene  of  Jesus'  appearances  the  evangelists  do  not  differ 
from  each  other  merely  as  men  might  differ  who  were 
recording  the  testimony  of  agitated  observers.  In  this 
case  there  might  no  doubt  be  divergences,  but  they 
would  be  of  an  accidental  character;  they  would  explain 
themselves,  or  would  need  no  explanation.  What  we 
find  in  the  gospels  is  far  more  conscious,  deliberate,  and 
serious  than  this,  and  there  is  something  perplexing, 
not  to  say  disconcerting  about  it,  until  we  understand 


THE  RESURRECTION  133 

the  evangelists'  point  of  view.  What  are  the  facts, 
then,  under  this  head,  and  how  are  we  to  look  at  them? 
In  the  gospel  according  to  Matthew,  ch.  26 31  L ,  we 
have  the  remarkable  word  of  Jesus  spoken  to  His  dis- 
ciples as  they  left  the  upper  room  for  the  garden  of 
Gethsemane.  'All  ye  shall  be  offended  in  Me  this 
night;  for  it  is  written,  I  will  smite  the  shepherd,  and  the 
sheep  of  the  flock  shall  be  scattered  abroad.  But  after 
I  am  raised  up,  I  will  go  before  you  into  Galilee.'  This 
is  not  the  only  passage,  as  we  shall  afterwards  see,  in 
which  Jesus  predicts  His  resurrection,  but  it  is  the  only 
one  in  which  He  connects  it  with  the  immediate  future 
of  His  disciples,  and  gives  what  is  in  a  sense  the  pro- 
gramme of  His  appearances.  There  is  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  Jesus  did  not  speak  these  words.  It  is  not 
always  safe  to  lean  on  internal  evidence,  but  the  truly 
poetic  conception  of  the  Good  Shepherd  rallying  His 
dispersed  flock  and  going  before  them  (cf.  John  10 4)  to 
the  old  familiar  fields  is  at  least  in  keeping  with  the 
occasion  and  its  mood.  The  evangelist  certainly  takes 
the  words  seriously,  and  his  resurrection  narrative  car- 
ries out  the  scheme  which  they  suggest.  When  the 
women  visit  the  tomb  on  the  first  day  of  the  week,  an 
angel  says  to  them:  'Go  quickly,  and  tell  His  disciples 
that  He  has  risen  from  the  dead;  and  behold  He  goeth 
before  you  into  Galilee;  there  shall  ye  see  Him'  (Matt. 
28  7) .  The  same  message  is  repeated  by  Jesus  when  He 
appears  to  these  women  on  their  way  to  execute  the  charge 
of  the  angel:  'Go  tell  My  brethren  that  they  depart  into 
Galilee,  and  there  shall  they  see  Me'  (Matt.  28  10).  It  is 
not  necessary  to  consider  whether  verses  9  and  10  are  no 
more  than  a  'doublet'  of  what  precedes— the  tradition 
of  the  same  fact  in  another  form;  the  point  is  that  this 
is  the  programme  which  is  carried  out  in  the  first  gospel. 
The  eleven  disciples  departed  into  Galilee  (v.   16),  and 


i34  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

saw  Jesus  there.  There  also  they  received  the  great 
commission,  Go  and  make  disciples  of  all  nations.  Not 
only  is  there  no  appearance  of  Jesus  to  the  disciples  at 
Jerusalem,  but  any  such  appearance  is  carefully  excluded. 
The  disciples  are  promptly  directed  away  from  Jersualem 
— go  quickly  and  tell  them — both  by  the  angel  and  by 
Jesus,  and  we  must  assume  that  they  left  at  once.  As 
far  as  they  are  concerned  the  appearing  of  Jesus  is  an 
experience  which  is  connected  with  Galilee  alone. 

If  we  turn  to  the  gospel  of  Mark,  we  find  there  also, 
at  ch.  14  27,  the  prophetic  words  of  Jesus  quoted  above. 
It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  for  him  also,  as  for  Mat- 
thew, they  determined  the  character  of  his  resurrection 
narrative.  He  reproduces  them  in  his  account  of  what 
took  place  at  the  grave.  The  angel  says  to  the  woman, 
Go  tell  His  disciples  and  Peter  that  He  goeth  before  you 
into  Galilee :  there  shall  ye  see  Him,  as  He  said  unto  you. 
The  gospel  of  Mark,  like  everything  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, was  written  by  a  believer  in  the  resurrection;  and 
it  is  inconceivable  that  it  broke  off  without  the  fulfilment 
of  this  programme.  The  consternation  of  the  women 
described  in  verse  8 — 'And  they  went  out  and  fled  from 
the  tomb:  for  trembling  and  astonishment  had  come 
upon  them;  and  they  said  nothing  to  any  one;  for  they 
were  afraid' — is  not  the  end  of  the  story;  and  in  spite 
of  the  ingenious  comment  of  Wellhausen  can  never  have 
been  the  end  of  it.  As  it  stands  at  present,  the  gospel 
according  to  Mark  records  no  appearance  of  Jesus  what- 
ever; but  it  is  no  rash  assumption  that  with  the  same 
prophetic  intimation  as  Matthew  (Mark  14  28  =  Matt. 
26 32) ,  and  the  same  or  an  even  more  emphatic  repro- 
duction of  it  by  the  angel  at  the  tomb  (Mark  16  7  =  Matt. 
28  7),  the  original  conclusion  ran  on  the  same  lines  as 
that  of  our  first  gospel.  The  fear-stricken  women  may 
have  been  met,  as  in  Matthew,  and  reassured  by  the 


THE  RESURRECTION  135 

Risen  Jesus  Himself;  and  when  they  did  their  errand 
the  eleven  would  start  for  Galilee  and  see  the  Lord 
there.  Indeed,  the  relation  of  the  two  evangelists  is 
such  that  the  only  plausible  construction  of  the  facts  is 
that  the  last  chapter  of  Matthew,  barring  what  is  said 
about  bribing  the  soldiers,  which  corresponds  to  a  pas- 
sage earlier  in  Matthew  and  with  no  parallel  in  Mark, 
is  based  throughout  on  Mark's  original  conclusion.  Had 
this  been  preserved,  it  would  have  answered  to  Matt. 
28' 16"20;  that  is,  it  would  have  given  a  Galilaean  appear- 
ance of  Jesus  to  the  eleven,  and  would  have  excluded  an 
appearance  at  Jerusalem. 

When  we  turn  to  Luke,  it  is  of  the  first  importance  to 
remember  that  he  wrote  with  Mark  before  him.  It  is 
not  possible  here  to  give  the  proof  of  this;  but  though 
there  are  still  scholars  who  hold  that  the  evangelists  had 
no  literary  relation  to  one  another,  and  that  each  wrote 
immediately  and  only  from  oral  tradition,  the  writer  can 
only  express  his  own  conviction  of  the  entire  inadequacy 
of  any  such  view  to  do  justice  to  the  phenomena.  As- 
suming, therefore,  that  Luke  knew  Mark,  we  notice  in 
the  first  place  that  he  does  not  give  the  words  of  Jesus 
on  leaving  the  upper  room.  There  is  nothing  about  the 
smiting  of  the  shepherd,  the  scattering  of  the  flock,  the 
rising  and  going  before  into  Galilee.  This  is  not  because 
Luke  was  ignorant  of  the  words,  or  accidentally  over- 
looked them,  for  we  can  see  when  we  come  to  his  resur- 
rection narrative  that  the  sound  of  them  was  in  his  ears. 
His  two  angels  say  to  the  women,  'He  is  not  here,  but 
is  risen;  remember  how  He  spake  unto  you  while  He 
was  yet  in  Galilee,  saying  that  the  Son  of  Man  must  be 
delivered  up  into  the  hands  of  sinful  men,  and  be  cruci- 
fied, and* the  third  day  rise  again.'  Here  a  general  re- 
ference to  Jesus'  predictions  of  His  death  and  resurrection, 
made  while  He  was  yet  in  Galilee,  is  substituted  for  the 


136  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

direction  to  the  disciples  to  go  into  Galilee  and  meet 
Him  there.  We  may  say  'substituted'  without  hesita- 
tion; for  there  is  nothing  accidental  about  it.  Luke 
had  what  he  thought  sufficient  reasons  for  omitting 
altogether  what  he  read  in  Mark  i427f-;  and  for  giving 
what  he  read  in  Mark  16  7  an  entirely  different  turn.  A 
reader  unfamiliar  with  the  minute  comparison  of  the 
gospels  may  think  these  reckless  statements,  but  no  one 
who  has  been  at  pains  to  examine  the  way  in  which 
Luke  habitually  makes  use  of  Mark  will  find  any  diffi- 
culty in  them.  The  only  question  they  raise  is,  Can  we 
find  out  the  reasons  on  the  strength  of  which  Luke  felt 
entitled  or  bound  to  treat  these  passages  as  he  has  done  ? 

The  answer  is  obvious.  Luke  omitted  or  modified 
these  passages  because  they  connected  the  appearances 
of  the  Risen  Jesus  with  Galilee,  whereas  everything  he 
had  to  tell  about  Him  was  connected  with  Jerusalem. 
Hence  he  not  only  records  appearances  only  at  Jeru- 
salem or  in  its  vicinity,  but  he  takes  as  much  pains  to 
confine  the  disciples  to  Jerusalem  as  Matthew  takes  to 
get  them  away.  The  women  do  not,  as  in  Matthew, 
see  Jesus  on  the  way  from  the  tomb,  but  He  appears 
on  the  very  day  of  the  resurrection  to  Cleophas  and  his 
friend,  to  Peter,  and  to  the  eleven  and  those  with  them. 
He  bids  them,  apparently  on  this  occasion,  continue  in 
the  city  until  they  are  clothed  in  power  from  on  high 
(24 49).  They  are  not  only  not  represented  as  going  to 
Galilee  and  seeing  Jesus  there,  according  to  His  command- 
ment: His  commandment  is  reversed;  they  are  forbidden 
to  leave  Jerusalem;  and  it  is  there,  and  not  amid  the 
scenes  of  His  early  fellowship  with  them,  that  they  receive 
the  great  commission.  These  are  the  facts:  what  do 
they  signify,  and  how  are  they  to  be  explained  ? 

If  we  were  merely  dealing  with  texts,  the  relation  of 
which  to  reality  was  indeterminable  except  from  them- 


THE  RESURRECTION  137 

selves,  we  might  be  hopelessly  baffled.  We  should  have 
to  say  that  both  these  ways  of  representing  the  case 
could  not  be  true,  and  that  quite  possibly  neither  was. 
If  one  witness  says,  Jesus  appeared  to  His  disciples  in 
Galilee  only,  not  in  Jerusalem;  and  another,  He  ap- 
peared to  them  in  Jerusalem  only,  not  in  Galilee;  the 
temptation  is  strong  to  say  that  we  cannot  depend  on 
anything  that  is  said  about  His  appearing.  But  here  it 
is  necessary  to  remember  the  evidence  for  the  resurrec- 
tion which  is  quite  independent  of  Matthew  and  Luke. 
Those  manifestations  of  the  Risen  Saviour  which  in 
themselves  and  in  the  spiritual  quickening  which  accom- 
panied them  created  the  Christian  Church  and  the  New 
Testament  retain  their  original  certainty  even  under  the 
extreme  supposition  that  we  can  make  nothing  what- 
ever of  the  testimony  of  the  evangelists.  But  there  is 
no  need  even  to  contemplate  a  case  so  extreme.  The 
faith  of  the  evangelists  themselves  did  not  rest  on  the 
isolated  stories  they  told  of  the  appearing  of  Jesus, 
whether  in  one  place  or  another;  it  rested  where  such 
faith  must  always  rest,  on  the  basis  of  the  apostolic 
testimony  in  general,  and  on  the  powerful  working  in 
the  Church  of  the  spirit  sent  from  Christ.  The  apostolic 
testimony,  however,  was  much  broader  and  more  com- 
prehensive than  anything  we  find  in  the  evangelists,  as 
a  glance  at  1  Corinthians  15  4"8  is  sufficient  to  show.  Of 
this,  the  writer  believes,  the  evangelists  themselves 
were  as  well  aware  as  we;  they  could  not  have  been 
ignorant  of  a  tradition  which  was  common,  when  Paul 
wrote,  to  all  Christendom — handed  over  to  him  at  Jeru- 
salem, and  by  him  transmitted  to  the  Gentile  churches. 
The  question  suggested  by  the  phenomena  of  the  gospels 
accordingly  takes  another  form.  It  is  not,  How  are  we 
to  believe  in  the  resurrection  in  face  of  the  indubitable 
and  intentional  inconsistencies  of  Matthew  and   Luke? 


138  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

but,  What  was  the  interest  which  guided  an  evangelist 
in  what  he  wrote  about  the  resurrection?  What  did  he 
conceive  to  be  his  duty  in  this  matter,  and  how  were 
Matthew  and  Luke  led  to  do  their  duty  in  a  way  which 
at  first  sight  is  so  disconcerting  to  the  reader  ? 

In  view  of  the  facts  which  have  just  been  presented,  it 
is  not  too  rash  to  suggest  that  in  their  resurrection  nar- 
ratives the   evangelists   did   not   conceive   themselves   to 
be   stating   systematically   or   exhaustively   the   evidence 
for  the  resurrection.     Not  that  these  narratives  are  not 
evidence,  but,  as  the  writers  must  have  been  aware,  they 
are   quite   inadequate   to   represent    the   evidence    as   a 
whole.     The  aim  of  the  various  writers — their  concep- 
tion of  an  evangelist's  function — seems  rather  to  have 
been  this:   believing  in  the  resurrection  themselves,  and 
writing  for  those  who  believed  in  it,  they  aimed  at  giving 
such  an  account  of  it  as  should  bring  out  its  permanent 
significance  for  the  Church.     The  main  thing  in  all  the 
resurrection  narratives  in  the  gospels  is  the  appearing  of 
Jesus  to  the  eleven,  and  His  final  charge  or  commission. 
This  is  obviously  the  case  in  Matthew,  where  apart  from 
the  appearance  to  the  women  in  ch.  28  9f-,  which  is  only 
used  to  prepare  for  this,  there  is  no  other  manifestation 
of  Jesus  at  all.     To  the  writer,  it  is  not  doubtful  that  in 
the  original  form  of  Mark  it  would  have  been  the  same. 
Even   the   later    conclusion    to    Mark,    which    mentions 
appearances  to  Mary  of  Magdala  and  to  'two  of  them 
as  they  walked,  on  their  way  into  the  country/  has  no- 
thing to  tell  of  these  borrowings  from  Luke  and  John; 
in  keeping  with  the  true  conception  of  a  gospel  narrative 
it  enlarges  only  on  the  appearance  to  the  eleven,  and  on 
what  Jesus  said  to  them.     Luke,  no  doubt,  in  his  exquisite 
story  of  the  two  disciples   at   Emmaus,   represents  the 
Lord  as  interpreting  to  them  in  all  the  Scriptures  the 
things    concerning    Himself,    but    he    too    concentrates 


THE  RESURRECTION  139 

attention  on  an  appearance  to  the  eleven  and  on  the 
great  commission  given  on  that  occasion.  If  we  leave 
out  of  account  the  supplementary  twenty-first  chapter, 
and  regard  the  fourth  gospel  as  closing  according  to 
the  original  intention  of  the  writer  with  ch.  20 31,  we 
see  that  there  also  the  same  holds  good.  What  John  is 
interested  in  is  to  be  seen  in  ch.  20 19~23.  Incidentally 
an  evangelist  might  mention  this  or  that  with  regard  to 
an  appearing  of  Jesus  to  an  individual;  he  might  tell 
expressly  that  He  was  seen  of  Mary  Magdalene,  as  John 
does;  or  of  more  women  than  one,  as  Matthew  does; 
he  might  imply,  without  expressly  telling,  or  having  any 
details  to  tell,  that  He  had  appeared  to  Peter,  as  Luke 
does;  but  it  was  not  in  these  incidents  that  he  was  inter- 
ested, and  it  is  not  on  the  precision  of  his  knowledge 
as  to  their  time,  place,  or  circumstances,  that  his  belief  in 
the  resurrection  or  his  sense  of  its  significance  depends. 
The  one  main  thing  is  that  Jesus  appeared  to  the  dis- 
ciples, the  men  whom  He  had  chosen  to  be  with  Him, 
and  whom  He  had  trained  to  continue  His  work;  and 
that  in  His  intercourse  with  these  chosen  men  their 
minds  were  opened  to  the  meaning  of  the  resurrection 
both  for  Him  and  for  themselves.  His  greatness  rose 
upon  them  as  it  had  never  done  in  the  days  of  His  flesh. 
They  became  conscious  of  His  exaltation,  of  His  entrance 
into  the  sphere  of  the  divine.  They  saw  Him  seated  at 
the  right  hand  of  God.  He  had  all  power  given  to  Him 
in  heaven  and  on  earth,  and  in  the  strength  of  this  ex- 
altation He  sent  them  forth  to  win  the  world  for  Him. 

It  is  not  in  the  least  improbable — or  so,  at  least,  it 
seems  to  the  writer — that  in  the  great  appearing  of  Jesus 
to  the  eleven  recorded  in  all  the  gospels  (Matt.  28  16~20, 
Mark  16  14~18,  Luke  24  36~49,  John  20  19"23)  we  have  not 
the  literal  record  of  what  took  place  on  a  single  occasion, 
but  the  condensation  into  a  representative  scene  of  all 


i4o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

that  the  appearances  of  Jesus  to  His  disciples  meant. 
These  appearances  may  well  have  been  more  numerous 
— with  i  Cor.  15  in  our  hands  we  may  say  quite  freely 
that  they  were  more  numerous — than  the  evangelists 
enable  us  to  see;  but  it  is  not  separate  appearances,  nor 
the  incidental  phenomena  connected  with  them,  nor  the 
details  of  time  and  place,  in  which  the  evangelists  and 
the  Church  for  which  they  write  are  interested.  It  is 
the  significance  of  the  resurrection  itself.  If  for  the  pur- 
pose of  bringing  out  this  significance  the  whole  manifes- 
tation of  Jesus  to  His  disciples  was  condensed  into  a 
single  representative  or  typical  scene,  and  if  Jesus  never- 
theless had  in  point  of  fact  appeared  in  different  places, 
we  can  understand  how  one  evangelist  should  put  this 
typical  scene  in  Galilee  and  another  in  Jerusalem.  When 
we  see  what  is  being  done  we  should  rather  say  that 
both  are  right  than  that  either  is  wrong.  If  the  gospel 
according  to  Matthew  rests  on  the  authority  of  an  original 
disciple  of  Jesus,  it  is  very  natural  that  he  should  make 
Galilee  the  scene  of  the  appearing;  Galilee,  as  we  have 
seen,  had  been  prepared  for  by  the  word  of  Jesus,  and 
it  would  be  endeared  by  old  associations.  Luke,  on  the 
other  hand,  knew  Christianity  only  as  a  faith  which  had 
its  cradle  and  capital  at  Jerusalem,  and  it  was  as  natural 
that  he  should  put  the  representative  appearing  there. 
In  either  case,  however,  it  is  a  representative  appearing 
that  is  meant,  and  with  whatever  relative  right  it  is  located 
in  Jerusalem  or  in  Galilee,  it  is  not  in  the  location  that 
the  writer's  interest  lies.  It  is  in  the  revelation  which  is 
made  of  the  exaltation  of  Jesus  and  the  calling  of  the 
Church.  This,  too,  has  a  representative  character,  as  is 
evident  from  the  fact  that,  though  the  meaning  is  sub- 
stantially the  same  in  all  the  gospels,  the  language  in 
which  it  is  conveyed  is  surprisingly  different.  If  we  com- 
pare the  words  which  Jesus  speaks  in  the  four  passages 


THE  RESURRECTION  141 

just  referred  to — all  of  which  unquestionably  serve  the 
same  purpose  in  the  gospels  in  which  they  respectively 
stand — it  is  evident  that  we  have  no  literal  report  of  words 
of  the  Lord.  We  have  an  expression  of  the  significance  of 
His  exaltation  for  Himself  and  for  the  Church.  What 
this  significance  was  we  have  considered  already  in  speak- 
ing of  the  place  of  Christ  in  the  faith  of  the  synoptic  evan- 
gelists; it  covered  their  assurance  that  He  was  Lord  of  all, 
that  He  was  exalted  a  Prince  and  a  Saviour,  that  forgive- 
ness was  to  be  preached  to  all  men  in  His  name;  it  in- 
cluded the  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit  and  His  own  spiritual 
presence.  This  is  what  an  evangelist  is  concerned  to 
attest,  and  if  the  difficulties  which  a  literal  and  formal 
criticism  finds  in  his  narrative  had  been  presented  to  him, 
the  probability  is  that  he  would  not  have  taken  them 
seriously.  He  might  cheerfully  have  admitted  that  with  a 
perfectly  honest  mind  he  had  been  mistaken  about  a  detail 
here  or  there;  but  that  he  had  been  mistaken  about  the 
main  thing — that  the  Lord  had  appeared  to  His  own, 
and  that  this  great  commission  was  what  His  appearing 
signified — he  could  not  possibly  admit.  Nor  need  we. 
The  resurrection  is  not  attested  in  the  gospels  by  out- 
side witnesses  who  had  inquired  into  it  as  the  Psychical 
Research  Society  inquires  into  ghost  stories;  it  is  at- 
tested— in  the  only  way  in  which  it  can  be  attested  at 
all — by  people  who  are  within  the  circle  of  realities  to 
which  it  belongs,  who  share  in  the  life  it  has  begotten, 
and  who  therefore  know  that  it  is,  and  can  tell  what  it 
means.  To  see  this  is  to  get  the  right  point  of  view  for 
dealing  with  the  difficulties  in  the  narratives;  it  is  not 
too  much  to  add,  that  it  takes  away  from  these  difficulties 
any  religious  importance.  Whether  we  can  tell  precisely 
how  they  originated  or  not,  the  testimony  of  the  apostles 
and  the  Church  to  the  resurrection  is  unimpaired:  Jesus 
lives  in  His  exaltation,  and  He  holds  from  the  beginning  in 


i42  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

the  faith  of  His   disciples  that  incomparable  place  which 
He  can  never  lose. 

The  question  with  which  we  are  ultimately  concerned 
— whether  the  Christian  faith  which  we  see  in  the  New 
Testament  has  a  basis  of  fact  sufficient  to  sustain  it — is 
in  part  answered  by  what  has  now  been  said.  The  New 
Testament  life  would  have  no  sufficient  basis,  indeed  it 
would  never  have  been  manifested  in  history,  but  for 
the  resurrection.  It  is  in  a  sense  the  fulfilment  of  the 
word  of  Jesus  in  the  fourth  gospel:  Because  I  live,  ye 
shall  live  also;  we  could  never  have  seen  or  known  it  if 
the  creed  had  ended,  as  some  people  think  a  Christian 
creed  might  end,  with  'crucified,  dead,  and  buried.'  But 
though  without  the  resurrection  the  New  Testament 
attitude  to  Christ  would  have  no  justification,  and  would 
in  point  of  fact  be  plainly  impossible,  the  resurrection, 
taken  by  itself,  is  not  that  complete  historical  justifica- 
tion of  Christianity  which  our  ultimate  question  had  in 
view.  The  resurrection  is  the  resurrection  of  Jesus,  and 
though  it  lifts  Jesus,  as  it  were,  into  His  place  of  incom- 
municable greatness,  it  is  this  Person  and  no  other  who 
is  thus  transcendently  exalted,  and  there  must  be  some 
inner  relation  between  what  He  is  and  what  He  was. 
There  must  be  some  proportion  between  the  life  which 
He  now  lives  at  God's  right  hand,  and  that  which  He 
lived  among  men  upon  the  earth;  there  must,  if  Chris- 
tian faith  is  to  be  vindicated,  be  some  congruity  between 
His  present  significance  for  God  and  man,  as  faith  appre- 
hends it,  and  that  which  can  be  traced  in  His  historical 
career.  It  is  in  the  life  He  lived  on  earth  that  His  mind 
is  mainly  revealed  to  us;  and  if  His  mind,  as  we  there 
come  in  contact  with  it — His  mind,  in  particular,  with 
regard  to  Himself,  and  the  significance  of  His  being  and 
work  in  the  relations  of  God  and  man — did  not  stand  in 
essential    relation    to    the    believing    Christian    attitude 


THE   SELF-REVELATION  OF   JESU 


A^> 


towards  Him,  we  should  feel  that  Christian  faith,  his- 
torically speaking,  had  an  insecure  foundation.  The 
New  Testament  estimate  of  Christ  can  only  be  vindi- 
cated if  we  can  show  that  the  historical  Person,  whose 
resurrection  is  attested  by  the  apostles,  explicitly  or 
virtually  asserted  for  Himself,  during  His  life  in  the  world, 
a  place  in  the  relations  of  God  and  man  as  incommu- 
nicable and  all-determining  as  that  which  we  have  seen 
bestowed  upon  Him  in  the  primitive  Christian  books. 
The  question,  therefore,  we  have  now  to  answer  is,  What 
do  we  know  of  Jesus?  In  particular,  what  place — in 
His  own  apprehension — did  Jesus  fill  in  the  relations  of 
men  to  God? 


II 

THE   SELF-REVELATION  OF  JESUS 

(a)  Preliminary  critical  considerations. 

In  proposing  this  question  for  discussion,  at  least  in 
the  second  and  more  definite  form,  we  encounter  the 
same  preliminary  objections  which  confronted  us  in 
dealing  with  the  resurrection.  There  are  those  for  whom 
it  is  not  a  question  at  all,  and  who  therefore  will  not 
seriously  raise  it.  To  ask  what  place  Jesus  filled  in 
the  relations  of  God  and  men  contemplates  the  possi- 
bility of  finding  that  He  did  fill  some  place  of  peculiar 
interest  and  importance — the  possibility,  to  put  it  ex- 
tremely, that  He  was  and  is  to  both  God  and  man  what 
no  other  can  be,  and  that  all  divine  and  human  relations 
are  determined  by  Him;  and  this  is  a  possibility  which 
principle  does  not  allow  them  to  contemplate.  Jesus  was 
a  historical  character,  they  argue;  and  there  cannot  be 
in  history  a  man  whose  relations  to  God  and  his  kind 


i44  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

are  essentially  different  from  those  of  other  men.  A 
man  may  be  a  great  spiritual  genius,  through  whom 
the  realities  and  possibilities  of  the  spiritual  life  are 
revealed  to  others,  but  no  man  can  be  so  identified  with 
the  truth  which  he  reveals  as  that  if  he  were  lost  it  would 
be  lost  also.  Plausible  as  this  may  seem,  it  is  an  a  priori 
settlement  of  a  question  which  insists  on  being  settled 
otherwise.  The  only  reason  we  have  for  raising  the 
question  is  that  Jesus  has,  in  point  of  fact,  from  the 
very  beginning,  had  a  place  assigned  to  Him  by  Chris- 
tian faith  which  is  distinct  in  kind  from  that  assigned  to 
other  men;  He  has  been  believed  to  be,  both  to  God 
and  to  the  human  race,  what  no  other  is  or  can  be.  After 
what  has  been  said  in  the  earlier  part  of  this  discussion, 
we  cannot  think  this  statement  of  the  facts  open  to  ques- 
tion, and  we  do  not  feel  at  liberty  to  decide  a  priori  that 
the  Christian  faith  from  the  beginning  was  a  complete 
mistake.  There  may  have  been  grounds  for  giving  Jesus 
His  incomparable  place.  It  may  not  have  been  an  irra- 
tional enthusiasm,  but  the  irresistible  compulsion  of  fact 
in  His  character,  His  personality,  His  attitude  and  claims, 
that  made  His  followers  exalt  Him  as  they  did.  No 
dogmatic  preconception  as  to  what  is  possible  or  impossible 
in  the  field  of  history  can  exempt  us  from  the  duty  of  in- 
quiring into  the  facts.  The  very  men  who  were  the  first 
to  have  their  religious  life  so  absolutely  determined  by 
Jesus  once  thought  of  Him  as  only  a  neighbour,  another 
like  themselves.  But  they  came  to  think  of  Him  very  dif- 
ferently, and  it  is  not  for  the  historian  to  decide  per- 
emptorily and  off-hand  that  they  were  wrong;  his  func- 
tion is  rather  to  inquire  what  it  was  in  Jesus  which  changed 
their  attitude  to  Him.  Even  if  he  could  not  find  out,  he 
would  have  no  right  to  say  that  the  change  was  gratuitous  or 
irrational.  He  could  only  say  it  awaited  explanation. 
What  we  have  to  do,  therefore,  is  to  get  at  the  facts 


THE   SELF-REVELATION  OF   JESUS       145 

in  the  most  unprejudiced  way  we  can.  The  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  doing  so  are  not  to  be  ignored,  but  neither 
are  they  to  be  exaggerated.  Exaggerated  they  un- 
doubtedly are  by  those  who  point  to  the  general  char- 
acter of  the  gospels,  and  infer  from  it  the  impossibility 
of  using  them  with  confidence  for  any  historical  purpose. 
History,  as  Quintilian  says,  is  written  ad  narrandum,  non 
ad  probandum — to  tell  a  story,  not  to  make  out  a  case. 
But  the  gospels  are  written  to  make  out  a  case.  This  is 
avowed  by  the  writer  of  the  fourth;  his  case  is  that  Jesus 
is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God ;  and  he  writes  that  men  may 
believe  this,  and  that  believing  they  may  have  life  in 
His  name  (John  20 31).  It  is  the  case  of  the  others  also, 
and  though  they  do  not  state  it  so  explicitly,  they  are 
none  the  less  under  the  influence  of  it  while  they  write. 
It  is  not  so  much  that  they  deliberately  misrepresent  facts, 
as  that  facts  are  unconsciously  transformed  in  their 
minds  to  suit  their  case.  Stories  grow,  are  amplified, 
heightened,  illumined,  made  demonstrative.  Jesus,  in 
the  only  documents  to  which  we  can  appeal,  is  presented  in 
a  role,  that  of  the  Messiah,  and  in  every  situation  He  acts 
up  to  the  part.  All  the  gospels  represent  stages  in  the 
idealising  of  their  hero,  a  process  which  began,  no  doubt, 
in  the  imagination  of  His  enthusiastic  disciples  even 
while  He  lived,  but  which  received  an  irresistible  and  in- 
calculable impulse  when  He  rose  from  the  dead.  The 
glory  of  His  exaltation  was  reflected  upon  His  earthly 
career;  it  was  manifested  in  works,  words,  and  experiences 
answering  to  the  greatness  of  the  Messiah,  and  of  the  hopes 
associated  with  Him.  What,  therefore,  we  are  enabled 
to  trace  by  the  help  of  the  gospels,  is  not  so  much  the 
history  of  Jesus  as  'the  history  of  the  faith  of  ancient 
Christendom  during  the  first  half  century  of  its  exist- 
ence.'1   The  gospels  are    not    historical    sources;    they 

1  J.  Weiss,  Dk  Schriften  des  Neuen  Testaments,  36. 


146  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

are  documents  which  reflect  'the  faith  and  the  religious 
imagination  of  the  early  churches.' l  It  is  more  than 
seventy  years  now  since  Strauss  in  his  Life  of  Jesus  gave 
the  first  systematic  expression  to  this  general  mode  of  ap- 
preciating the  evangelic  narratives,  and  it  has  been  echoed 
in  writers  whose  name  is  Legion  down  to  the  present  hour. 
In  the  precise  form  which  its  author  gave  it,  the  mythical 
theory  may  have  been  dissipated  or  reduced  to  insignifi- 
cant proportions;  but  in  the  mental  attitude  to  the  gos- 
pel history  which  is  here  in  view — an  attitude  which  has 
prevailed  widely  for  two  generations,  and  is  at  the  present 
moment  perhaps  more  prevalent  than  ever — we  have  an 
extraordinary  testimony  to  its  power.  As  long  as  this 
mental  attitude  prevails  we  cannot  get  our  question  fairly 
considered.  Men's  temperaments  may  vary,  and  with 
them  the  spirit  in  which  they  address  themselves  to  the 
study  of  the  gospels.  One  man's  treatment  may  be  poetic, 
or  possibly  sentimental;  the  gospels  for  him  are  the  finest 
flowering  of  the  Christian  imagination;  of  course  they 
cannot  be  taken  for  truth,  but  they  must  always  be  deli- 
cately and  even  reverently  handled.  Another  is  mock- 
ing and  unsympathetic;  another  still  dispassionate, 
not  to  say  unfeeling.  But  the  result  is  always  the  same. 
Jesus  remains  out  of  our  reach.  The  figure  which  we 
see  in  the  gospels  is  the  Christ  of  the  Church's  faith,  not 
a  historical  person.  That  figure  did  not  create  the 
Church,  it  was  created  by  it.  As  we  have  them,  the  gos- 
pels are  not  the  foundation  of  the  Christian  religion, 
they  are  its  fruit.  They  show  us  the  Christian  conscious- 
ness, not  the  consciousness  of  Christ. 

Those  who  thus  remind  us  that  the  gospels  are  not 
historical  but  religious  books — that  their  motive  is  not  to 
provide  materials  for  the  scientific  biographer  or  his- 
torian, but  to  evoke  and  to  build  up  faith — might  perhaps 

1  Ibid.,  47. 


THE   SELF-REVELATION  OF   JESUS      147 

ask  themselves  whether  the  contrast  which  is  here  im- 
plied is  as  real  or  as  complete  as  they  suppose.  It  is 
quite  true  that  it  is  one  thing  to  tell  a  story,  and  another 
to  make  out  a  case;  but  if  a  man  has  a  sound  case,  the 
simplest  way  to  make  it  out  is  to  tell  his  story.  It  is 
surely  conceivable  that  his  case  may  be  constituted  by 
the  facts.  It  is  only  if  he  has  a  bad  case  that  he  is  under 
any  temptation  to  misrepresent,  or  colour,  or  suppress, 
or  produce  facts.  The  attitude  to  the  gospel  narratives 
which  has  just  been  described,  and  of  which  Strauss's 
mythical  theory  is  the  most  consistent  and  far-shining 
example,  is  prescribed  beforehand  by  the  assumption 
that  the  evangelists  have  a  bad  case.  Jesus,  it  is  assumed, 
cannot  really  have  that  place  in  the  relations  of  God 
and  man  which  the  primitive  Church  assigned  Him, 
and  therefore  everything  in  the  gospels  which  is  con- 
gruous with  that  place,  which  conditions  it  or  is  conditioned 
by  it,  must  have  some  other  explanation  than  that  it  is  true. 
But  this  assumption  forecloses  the  question,  and  is  one 
which  we  are  not  entitled  to  make.  Why  should  not  the 
evangelists,  or  the  primitive  Church  for  which  they  wrote, 
have  had  a  good  case  ?  Why  must  it  have  been  something 
else  than  reality  which  made  them  give  to  Jesus  the  place 
they  did?  And  if  it  is  conceivable — as  surely  it  is — that 
the  New  Testament  attitude  to  Jesus  is  right,  it  is  as  con- 
ceivable that  the  attitude  we  have  been  considering  to  the 
narratives  of  His  life  is  wrong.  In  spite  of  protestations 
made  in  the  name  of  'scientific'  history,  the  possibilities 
of  history  are  not  to  be  dogmatically  determined  beforehand. 
If  we  could  have  such  a  thing  as  Christianity  on  the 
basis  here  exhibited,  it  would  manifestly  be  Christianity 
without  Jesus.  It  would  be  a  religion  which  in  some  way 
was  connected  with  Him  when  it  made  its  entrance  into 
history;  but  the  connexion  would  be  partly  undiscover- 
able,  and  so  far  as  it  was  discovered  it  would  be  illegiti- 


i48  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

mate.  This  position  is  frankly  avowed,  for  example,  by 
Wellhausen.  He  distinguishes  in  the  broadest  manner 
between  Jesus  and  the  gospel — that  is,  between  Jesus  and 
the  Christian  religion  as  it  has  existed  from  the  beginning; 
and  he  is  not  only  certain  that  the  attempt  to  get  back  to  the 
historical  Jesus  is  one  which  must  always  be  frustrated,  but 
one  which,  even  if  it  were  successful,  could  only  lead  to 
disappointment.  The  historical  Jesus,  could  we  come  face 
to  face  with  Him,  would  not  sustain  the  Christian  con- 
ception of  the  Christ;  He  would  not  provide  a  justifica- 
tion for  the  religion  which  has  attached  itself  to  His 
name.  The  true  policy  of  the  Church,  therefore,  is  to 
stick  to  the  gospel,  and  not  to  try  to  return  to  Jesus.1 
Those  who  retain  any  connexion  with  historical  Chris- 
tianity find  it  hard  to  comprehend  this  state  of  mind. 
They  can  draw  no  such  distinction  between  Jesus  and 
the  gospel.  They  know  that  if  they  eliminated  Jesus 
from  what  they  call  the  gospel  they  would  eliminate 
everything.  Their  religion  rests  on  historical  realities 
which  are  inseparable  from  the  person  of  Jesus,  or  it 
ceases  to  be.  It  would  not  follow,  though  it  ceased  to  be, 
that  they  could  have  no  religion  whatever.  They  might 
still  be  believers  in  God  as  men  were  in  Old  Testament 
times,  but  they  could  not  be  believers  in  God  '  through 
Him'  (i  Peter  i 20).  Their  religion  would  have  no  title 
to  be  called  Christian,  no  claim  to  the  character  of  gospel. 
It  is  impossible,  therefore,  to  suppose  that  the  members  of 
any  Christian  Church  can  find  relief  from  the  stress  of  in- 
tellectual difficulty  by  distinguishing  between  the  gospel 
and  Jesus.  This  is  not  relief,  but  ruin;  it  is  not  the 
rescuing  of  their  religion,  but  the  abandonment,  not  to 
say  the  renunciation  of  it.  The  assumption  which  under- 
lies it  has  been  frankly  stated  by  a  writer  already  referred 
to:    'Jesus  was  nothing  more  than  a  human  being  like 

1  Einleitung  in  die  drei  ersten  Evangelien,  108  ff. 


THE   SELF-REVELATION   OF   JESUS       149 

the  rest  of  us.'  l  Of  course  if  this  can  be  assumed  there 
is  no  more  to  be  said.  The  place  which  Jesus  has  always 
held  in  Christian  faith  is  one  which  is  not  open  to  the  rest 
of  us,  never  has  been  and  never  can  be;  and  if  He  is  no 
more  than  the  rest  of  us,  it  should  never  have  been  open 
to  Him.  Nevertheless,  the  connexion  between  Jesus  and 
the  Christian  religion  remains;  and  unless  we  are  content 
to  leave  it  entirely  in  the  dark,  we  shall  find  ourselves  com- 
pelled to  raise  the  ulterior  question  which  by  this  assump- 
tion is  foreclosed.  Granting  that  the  figure  in  the  gospels 
is  the  product  of  the  Church's  faith,  by  what  was  that 
faith  itself  produced?  The  New  Testament  taken  as  a 
whole  represents  the  most  astonishing  outburst  of  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  energy  in  the  history  of  our  race: 
by  what  was  it  evoked  ?  Surely  the  probabilities  are  that 
some  extraordinary  reality — something  quite  unlike  the 
rest  of  us — lies  behind  and  explains  all  this:  a  reality  so 
powerful  and  impressive  that  it  could  not  easily  be  lost 
within  the  limits  of  a  generation,  either  by  simply  falling 
out  of  memory,  or  by  being  so  transfigured  and  exalted 
in  imagination  as  to  preserve  almost  no  trace  of  its  orig- 
inal aspect  or  proportions.  It  is  with  this  prejudice, 
rather  than  with  the  opposite  one,  that  we  think  it  rea- 
sonable to  approach  the  investigation  of  a  question  which 
can  never  be  less  than  vital  to  those  who  have  been  edu- 
cated in  Christian  faith. 

Before  proceeding,  however,  to  examination  of  the  facts, 
it  is  desirable  to  refer  to  two  prevalent  but  somewhat 
summary  ways  in  which  an  attempt  has  been  made  to  get 
into  contact  with  the  reality  which  lies  beneath  the  gospel 
narratives,  without  entering  into  any  scrutiny  in  detail. 

1  J.  Weiss,  Die  Schrijlen  des  Neuen  Testaments,  i.  67.  The  very  words 
ought  to  be  quoted.  '  Gerade  dass  Jesus  nichts  weiter  war  als  ein  Men- 
schenkind  wie  wir  andcrn  auch,  &c.'  Weiss  asserts  in  the  same  sentence 
the  greatness  and  power  of  the  personality  of  Jesus  and  his  own  rever- 
ence for  it. 


i5o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

The  one,  while  there  is  nothing  in  it  inconsistent  with 
history,  is  mainly  inspired  by  a  religious  interest.  When 
a  man  who  is  morally  in  earnest,  absorbed  in  the  effort  to 
lead  a  spiritual  life  in  the  world  of  nature,  a  life  of  freedom 
in  the  realm  of  necessity,  takes  the  gospels  into  his  hand 
and  looks  upon  the  figure  of  Jesus,  the  last  thing  which 
will  occur  to  him  is  that  this  figure  is  unreal.  There 
may  be  a  great  deal  in  the  gospel  narratives  which  puz- 
zles him,  which  he  does  not  know  what  to  do  with,  and 
for  the  present  must  ignore;  but  there  is  something  also 
which  is  its  own  evidence  and  which  rises  out  of  the  nar- 
rative in  unquestionable  reality — the  spiritual  life  of  Jesus. 
There  is  a  person  before  his  eyes  in  the  gospel  whose 
spiritual  reality  (to  express  it  thus)  is  so  indisputable  that 
it  carries  his  historical  reality  along  with  it.  A  life  of  such 
perfect  trust  in  God,  such  wonderful  love  to  God  and  man 
— a  life  that  by  its  very  mass  attracts  to  itself  so  irresist- 
ibly all  feeble  lives  that  have  the  faintest  affinity  with  it 
or  capacity  for  it — a  life  that  gathers  into  its  own  deep 
and  powerful  stream  all  souls  in  search  of  God  and  bears 
them  on  to  the  salvation  they  seek:  what  could  be  idler 
than  to  speak  of  such  a  life  as  unhistorical  or  unreal? 
Those  who  come  to  the  gospels  thus  can  only  feel  that  the 
life  of  Jesus,  even  in  the  historical  sense,  is  the  most  real 
thing  in  the  world;  and  so  far  from  admitting  that  Jesus 
is  practically  unknown  to  us,  they  are  certain  that  they 
know  Him  better  than  any  one  who  has  ever  lived,  better 
even  than  themselves.  They  are  quite  willing  to  leave 
to  historical  criticism  the  investigation  of  incident  and 
detail;  their  conviction  is  not  dependent  on  what  is  thought 
of  any  isolated  word  or  act  ascribed  to  Jesus  in  the  gospels; 
but  the  reality,  and  it  must  be  added  the  historical  reality, 
of  the  spiritual  life  of  Jesus  is  established  for  them  on 
grounds  which  historical  criticism  must  acknowledge,  and 
which  it  cannot  set  aside. 


THE   SELF-REVELATION  OF   JESUS      151 

This  is  a  way  of  approaching  the  gospels,  and  of  get- 
ting into  contact  with  the  reality  attested  in  them,  of  which 
we  are  bound  to  speak  with  the  utmost  respect.  It  is  a 
truly  religious  way  of  approaching  them,  and  must  largely 
reproduce  in  the  soul  the  experiences  of  the  first  dis- 
ciples of  Jesus.  But  the  more  completely  Jesus,  through 
the  picture  of  His  life  in  the  gospels,  establishes  His  as- 
cendency over  souls  seeking  God  and  freedom,  the  more 
inevitably  will  those  questions  arise  which  deal  with  His 
place  in  the  relations  of  the  soul  and  God.  How  is  it 
that  such  an  ascendency  comes  to  be  His?  How  does  it 
come  to  be  His  alone?  When  we  say,  'Yes,  this  life  is 
real;  it  is  the  life  of  one  whom  we  experience  through  it 
and  in  virtue  of  it  to  be  Saviour  and  Lord,'  what  do  we 
mean?  Who  is  He?  Is  there  any  indication,  in  words 
ascribed  to  Him,  of  a  consciousness  on  His  own  part 
answering  to  or  agreeing  with  these  experiences  of  ours? 
Such  questions  cannot  fail  to  arise  and  to  press  for  an 
answer,  and  it  is  in  investigating  the  gospels  to  find  mate- 
rial for  the  answer,  rather  than  in  dwelling  upon  the  general 
assurance  of  the  reality  of  the  inner  life  of  Jesus,  that  any 
contribution  is  likely  to  be  made  to  the  subject  with  which 
we  are  concerned.  It  is  too  easily  taken  for  granted  by 
many  who  study  the  genesis  of  faith  in  the  modern  man 
that  he  will  rest  content  with  the  immediate  impression 
made  by  Jesus  in  the  gospels,  and  that  ulterior  questions 
need  not  be  asked.  There  are  even  those  who  think  that 
it  does  not  matter  how  the  ulterior  questions  are  answered; 
the  impressions  are  their  own  evidence  and  will  remain 
what  they  are,  though  the  questions  they  naturally  prompt 
should  by  some  never  be  raised,  and  by  others  pronounced 
insoluble.  But  this  is  not  so  certain.  Capable  as  the 
human  mind  is  of  inconsistency,  it  does  not  readily  dis- 
own the  responsibility  of  explaining  and  justifying  its 
convictions.     What  if  Jesus  Himself,  in  the  special  case 


152  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

with  which  we  are  engaged,  pressed  this  responsibility 
upon  it?  What  if  He  directly  prompted  the  ulterior 
questions?  It  may  turn  out  to  be  the  case  that  in  His 
whole  bearing  toward  men  and  God  He  assumes  one  way 
of  answering  them  to  be  adequate,  and  others  not;  the 
extraordinary  influence  which  in  the  pages  of  the  gospels 
He  wields  over  others  may  be  merely  the  reflection  of  an 
extraordinary  consciousness  on  His  part  of  the  place  He 
fills  in  all  the  relations  of  God  and  human  souls.  If  upon 
examination  this  should  prove  to  be  so,  then,  valuable  as 
it  is  as  a  starting-point,  that  conviction  of  the  historical 
reality  of  Jesus  which  confines  itself  to  the  self-evidencing 
reality  of  His  spiritual  life — a  life  assumed  to  be  assimil- 
able, to  the  last  fibre,  by  us — is  not  all  we  have  to  take 
into  account.  While  it  assures  us  that  Jesus  was  truly 
a  historical  person,  and  a  historical  person  who  was  a 
great  conductor  of  spiritual  force,  it  does  not  face  with 
sufficient  definiteness  the  question  whether  there  was 
in  this  historical  person,  not  that  which  makes  a  spiritual 
movement  of  some  kind  credible,  but  that  which  justifies 
the  particular  spiritual  movement  which  appeals  to  Him 
as  its  Author.  When  we  speak  of  the  spiritual  or  inner 
life  of  Jesus— an  expression  which  we  instinctively  inter- 
pret by  those  experiences  in  ourselves  which  we  should 
describe  by  the  same  name — there  is  an  involuntary 
tendency  to  obliterate  or  ignore  any  difference  which 
may  exist  between  Jesus  and  those  to  whom  His  spiritual 
life  appeals.  Without  consciously  thinking  of  it,  we 
regard  Him  for  the  time  as  if  He  were  only  what  the 
rest  of  us  are.  But  this  amounts  to  deciding,  also  with- 
out thinking,  the  greatest  question  which  the  gospels 
and  the  Christian  religion  raise.  The  self-consciousness 
of  Jesus  is  not  a  happy  expression,  but  it  is  preferable  to 
the  inner  life  of  Jesus  in  one  way:  it  safeguards  more 
effectively   the   objectivity    and    personal   peculiarity   of 


THE  SELF-REVELATION   OF  JESUS      153 

that  which  it  denotes.  It  leaves  room  for  the  possibility 
that  in  the  mind  of  Jesus  about  Himself  there  may  be 
not  only  the  consciousness  that  He  is  one  with  us,  but 
such  a  consciousness  as  justifies  the  transcendent  place 
apart  given  to  Him  in  the  faith  of  the  Church.  Hence 
it  is  the  mind  of  Christ  about  Himself — His  self-conscious- 
ness in  the  technical  sense — and  not  His  inner  life  or  spir- 
itual experiences  in  general,  which  must  be  our  principal 
subject  of  inquiry;  and  to  investigate  this  subject  satis- 
factorily we  must  go  beyond  the  vague  impressions  in 
which  the  life  of  Jesus  first  proves  its  reality  to  us,  and 
study  the  gospel  evidence  in  detail. 

The  second  of  the  two  summary  ways  of  getting  into 
contact  with  the  reality  in  the  gospels  is  the  polar  opposite 
of  the  one  just  discussed.  It  is  that  which  is  illustrated 
in  the  well-known  article  of  Schmiedel  in  the  Encyclo- 
pedia Biblica.  '  When  a  profane  historian/  says  Schmie- 
del, 'finds  before  him  a  historical  document  which  tes- 
tifies to  the  worship  of  a  hero  unknown  to  other  sources, 
he  attaches  first  and  foremost  importance  to  those  fea- 
tures which  cannot  be  deduced  merely  from  the  fact  of 
this  worship,  and  he  does  so  on  the  simple  and  sufficient 
ground  that  they  would  not  be  found  in  this  source  unless 
the  author  had  met  with  them  as  fixed  data  of  tradition. 
The  same  fundamental  principle  may  safely  be  applied 
in  the  case  of  the  gospels,  for  they  also  are  all  of  them 
written  by  worshippers  of  Jesus.' !  We  only  put  this 
more  simply  when  we  say  that  anything  in  the  gospels  may 
be  regarded  as  signally  true  if  it  is  inconsistent  with  the 
worship  of  Jesus.  If  we  could  not  find  such  things  at  all, 
Schmiedel  holds  'it  would  be  impossible  to  prove  to  a 
sceptic  that  any  historical  value  whatever  was  to  be  as- 
signed to  the  gospels;  he  would  be  in  a  position  to  de- 
clare the  picture  of  Jesus  contained  in  them  to  be  purely 

1  Encyclopedia  Biblica,  1872  ff. 


154  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

a  work  of  phantasy,  and  could  remove  the  person  of 
Jesus  from  the  field  of  history.'  If  we  accepted  this 
canon  of  criticism,  it  might  be  reassuring  to  us  as  histo- 
rians to  find  that  there  are  passages  in  the  gospels  which 
no  worshipper  of  Jesus  could  have  invented,  passages, 
consequently,  which  were  data  to  the  evangelists,  and 
which  we  are  safe  in  counting  historical.  Of  these  the 
article  referred  to  mentions  five,  which  along  with  four 
others,  all  the  latter  tfeing  connected  with  the  miracles  and 
employed  to  discredit  them,  '  might  be  called  the  founda- 
tion pillars  for  a  truly  scientific  life  of  Jesus.'  The  five 
passages  in  question  are  worth  repeating.  They  are 
— (i)  Mark  io17:  Why  callest  thou  Me  good?  None 
is  good  save  God  only.  (2)  Mark  3 21 :  He  is  beside 
Himself.  (3)  Matt.  12  32:  Whoso  speaketh  a  word  against 
the  Son  of  Man,  it  shall  be  forgiven  him.  (4)  Mark  13  K: 
Of  that  day  and  of  that  hour  knoweth  no  one,  not  even 
the  angels  in  heaven,  neither  the  Son  but  the  Father. 
And  (5)  Mark  15  34:  My  God,  My  God,  why  hast  Thou 
forsaken  Me?  It  is  a  curious  comment  on  the  things 
most  surely  believed  among  profane  historians,  that  of 
these  foundation  pillars  the  third  and  fifth  have  since 
been  found  by  some  decidedly  shaky.  This,  however, 
does  not  matter  to  us  at  present.  What  does  matter 
is  that  Jesus  is  only  admitted  to  be  real  in  a  sense  which, 
avowedly,  leaves  the  whole  phenomenon  of  New  Testa- 
ment religion  not  only  unjustified  but  inexplicable. 
We  have  no  testimony  to  Jesus  at  all,  as  Schmiedel  points 
out,  except  that  of  men  who  worshipped  Him;  but  though 
some  of  that  testimony,  as  will  be  afterwards  shown, 
comes  from  intimates  and  contemporaries,  the  only  part 
of  it  which  we  can  receive  as  true  is  that  which  is  inconsis- 
tent with  such  worship.  The  idea  that  there  should  be 
reality  in  Jesus  of  such  a  kind  as  to  justify  worship  is 
summarily  excluded  ab  initio:    its  exclusion,   indeed,  is 


THE   SELF-REVELATION  OF   JESUS      155 

the  first  principle  of  this  criticism.  It  is  one  way  of 
criticising  this  to  point  out  that  it  takes  for  granted  that 
the  worship  of  Jesus  is  wrong,  that  the  Christian  attitude 
to  Him  is  unjustifiable,  and  that  the  Christian  religion 
was  from  the  beginning  a  mistake;  it  is  another,  and  not  a 
less  relevant  one,  to  point  out  that  it  leaves  the  Christian 
religion,  in  the  only  form  in  which  it  is  known  to  history, 
without  any  historical  explanation.  It  is  impossible 
to  rest  seriously  in  such  a  situation,  and  it  is  as  impossible 
to  suppose  seriously  that  we  have  got  out  of  it  when 
Schmiedel  tells  us  that  'the  thoroughly  disinterested  his- 
torian, recognising  it  to  be  his  duty  to  investigate  the 
grounds  for  this  so  great  reverence  for  Himself  which 
Jesus  was  able  to  call  forth,  will  then  first  and  foremost 
find  himself  led  to  recognise  as  true  the  two  great  facts 
that  Jesus  had  compassion  for  the  multitudes  and  that  he 
preached  with  power,  not  as  the  scribes.'  The  impor- 
tance of  these  two  great  facts  is  not  to  be  disputed,  but 
few  will  find  in  them  the  whole  explanation  of  the  New 
Testament  attitude  to  Jesus.  There  must  be  a  more 
intelligible  proportion  than  we  can  discover  here  between 
the  cause  and  the  effect;  and  while  it  may  relieve  some 
anxious  minds  to  know  that  the  most  rigorous  scepticism 
is  obliged  to  admit  the  existence  of  Jesus,  inquirers  with  an 
eye  on  all  the  facts  to  be  explained  may  find  that  a  more 
searching  investigation  brings  them  into  contact  with  a  still 
greater  reality  in  Jesus  than  this  paradoxically  sceptical 
criticism  has  discovered.  We  cannot  admit  beforehand, 
nor  can  we  allow  others  to  assume,  that  there  is  a  complete 
breach  of  continuity  between  the  Jesus  who  can  be  dis- 
covered in  history  and  the  Christ  who  has  had  from  the 
first  the  transcendent  place,  with  which  we  are  familiar, 
in  Christian  faith;  whether  there  is  or  is  not  a  true  con- 
tinuity between  them,  such  a  continuity  that  the  historical 
Jesus  justifies  the  attitude  of  believers  to  their  Lord  and 


156  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

Saviour,  is  a  question  which  has  to  be  tested  by  examina- 
tion of  the  evidence  in  our  hands.  That  evidence  is  con- 
tained in  the  gospels,  and  it  is  to  an  examination  of  these 
documents  we  now  proceed. 

For  reasons  on  which  it  is  needless  to  enlarge,  our 
attention  will  be  confined  to  the  synoptic  gospels- 
Matthew,  Mark,  and  Luke.  It  is  so  difficult  in  the  gos- 
pel according  to  John  to  distinguish  between  the  mind 
of  the  writer  and  that  of  the  subject — between  the  seed 
of  the  word  and  that  to  which  it  grows  in  the  soul — be- 
tween what  John  heard  in  Galilee  or  the  upper  room 
and  what  the  Lord  by  the  Spirit  said  in  His  heart  in 
later  days — that  it  could  only  be  used  inconclusively 
in  the  present  discussion.  Even  the  first  three  gospels 
cannot  be  used  without  reflection;  and  though  this  is  not 
the  place  to  make  any  contribution,  were  one  capable  of 
it,  to  the  solution  of  the  synoptic  problem,  it  is  necessary 
to  indicate  the  position  from  which  one  writes,  and  to 
justify  it  so  far  as  the  case  requires. 

The  criticism  of  the  gospels,  literary  and  historical, 
has  now  gone  on  for  more  than  a  hundred  and  fifty  years, 
and,  much  as  remains  and  perhaps  must  ever  remain 
uncertain,  there  are  one  or  two  important  conclusions 
on  which  experts  are  agreed.  To  begin  with,  it  is  agreed 
that  the  gospels  of  Matthew  and  Luke  are  based  upon 
Mark. 

With  a  very  few  slight  omissions,  the  whole  of  Mark 
is  embodied  in  the  other  evangelists.  He  has  provided 
for  them  the  framework  of  their  narrative,  and  it  is  in- 
deed the  strongest  proof  of  his  priority  that  while  Matthew 
and  Luke  frequently  diverge  from  each  other  in  respect  to 
the  order  of  events  in  the  life  of  Jesus,  they  never  agree 
against  Mark  in  such  divergences.  In  other  words, 
where  divergence  in  the  order  of  incidents  occurs,  either 
Matthew  supports  Mark   against  Luke,   or   Luke   sup- 


HISTORICAL  CRITICISM   OF  MARK     157 

ports  him  against  Matthew:  a  clear  proof  that  his  is 
the  original  order  underlying  both,  and  that  no  authority 
common  to  both  can  be  pleaded  against  it. 

The  priority  of  Mark  to  the  other  gospels  being  es- 
tablished, it  becomes  a  question  of  importance  who 
Mark  was,  and  what  was  his  relation  to  the  events  which, 
as  far  as  we  know,  first  obtained  from  his  hand  that 
literary  representation  through  which  we  are  familiar 
with  them.  Mark,  the  author  of  the  gospel,  was  assumed 
till  yesterday  to  be  identical  with  the  John  Mark  of  the 
book  of  Acts  (12  12)  and  the  Mark  mentioned  by  Peter 
(1st  Epist.  5  13)  and  Paul  (Col.  4  10>  Philemon  24,  2  Tim. 
4  u) ,  and  in  spite  of  recent  suspicions  *  there  is  no  solid 
ground  for  questioning  this  view.  A  very  ancient  tra- 
dition, quoted  by  Eusebius  from  Papias,  who  was  bishop 
of  Hierapolis  before  the  middle  of  the  second  century, 
is  all  the  external  help  we  have  to  define  more  precisely 
the  relation  of  Mark  to  the  facts  with  which  he  deals.  It 
runs  as  follows:2  'And  the  Elder  said  this  also:  Mark, 
having  become  the  interpreter  of  Peter,  wrote  down 
accurately  everything  that  he  remembered,  without, 
however,  recording  in  order  what  was  either  said  or  done 
by  Christ.  For  neither  did  he  hear  the  Lord,  nor  did  he 
follow  Him;  but  afterwards,  as  I  said,  [attended]  Peter, 
who  adapted  his  instructions  to  the  needs  [of  his  hearers], 
but  had  no  design  of  giving  a  connected  account  of  the 
Lord's  oracles.  So  then  Mark  made  no  mistake,  while  he 
thus  wrote  down  some  things  as  he  remembered  them; 
for  he  made  it  his  one  care  not  to  omit  anything  that  he 
had  heard,  or  to  set  down  any  false  statement  therein.  Such 
then  is  the  account  given  by  Papias  concerning  Mark.' 
This  brief  statement  has  been  put  upon  the  rack  a  thou- 

1  See  J.  Weiss,  Das  alteste  Evangelium,  385  ff. 

2  See  Eusebius,  Hist.  Eccl.,  iv.  30.  The  translation  is  taken  from 
Professor  Gwatkin's  Selections  from  Early  Christian  Writers,  p.  43  ff. 


i58  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

sand  times,  though  to  an  unsuspicious  mind  it  seems  fairly 
unambiguous.  The  presbyter,  to  whom  Papias  refers  as 
his  authority,  had  been  himself  an  immediate  disciple  of 
Jesus,  and  Papias  was  personally  acquainted  with  him.1 
It  is  hardly  conceivable  that  he  should  have  mistaken 
what  this  early  disciple  used  to  say  (Ueyev)  about  the 
gospel;  although  he  is  disparaged  by  Eusebius,  for 
theological  reasons,  as  a  person  of  very  mean  intelligence, 
Papias  was  quite  capable  of  recording  a  fact.  What  is 
required  in  a  witness  is  not  largeness  of  mind,  but  fidelity. 
The  one  important  fact  in  the  testimony  of  the  presbyter 
who  had  kept  company  with  Jesus  is  this,  that  the  gospel 
according  to  Mark  is  the  work  of  a  man  who  was  the  com- 
panion and  interpreter  of  Peter.  Indirectly,  if  not  im- 
mediately, it  has  the  authority  of  an  apostle  behind  it. 2 

1  Euseb.  Hist.  Eccl.,  iii.  39,  7.  'And  Papias,  of  whom  we  are  now 
speaking,  confesses  that  he  received  the  words  of  the  apostles  from  those 
that  followed  them,  but  says  that  he  was  himself  a  hearer  of  Aristion  and 
the  presbyter  John.'  The  much-discussed  question  whether  this  John 
whom  Papias  had  heard  is  or  is  not  one  with  John  the  son  of  Zebedee, 
the  apostle  to  whom  the  fourth  gospel  is  ascribed,  is  not  of  vital  conse- 
quence here;  he  was  in  any  case  a  'disciple  of  the  Lord,'  which  cannot 
mean  simply  a  Christian,  but  only  one  who  had  been  in  contact  with 
Jesus.  Papias  does  not  give  John's  opinion  from  a  book;  but  in  his  own 
book,  quoted  by  Eusebius,  he  reports  the  account  the  presbyter  used  to 
give  about  the  gospel  of  Mark.  For  opposite  views  about  John  and  his 
importance  here  v.  Zahn,  Forschungen  zur  Geschichte  des  neut.  Kanons, 
vi.  109  ff.;  Harnack,  Chronologie  der  altchr.  Litteratur,  660  ff.  Harnack's 
attempt  to  minimise  the  significance  of  the  phrase  'the  disciples  of  the 
Lord,'  applied  to  Aristion  and  John,  is  rather  ingenious  than  convincing. 
When  he  remarks  that  patirjrai  was  ganz  wesentlich  auf  Palastina  (Jiir  die 
Gesammtheit)  beschrankt,  he  seems  to  overlook  the  fact  that  in  Acts  it  is 
freely  used  of  Christians  everywhere,  and  that  outside  of  Acts  and  the  gos- 
pels it  does  not  occur  in  the  New  Testament  at  all. 

2  Harnack,  Chronologie,  i.  686  f.,  after  quoting  the  passage  from  Clem. 
Alex,  preserved  in  Eusebius,  H.  E.,  vi.  14,  and  ending  with  the  words  (re- 
ferring to  Mark's  composition  of  the  gospel  at  the  request  of  Peter's 
hearers  in  Rome)  birep  eniyvdvra  rbv  Uirpov  TcpoTpeTrTinioq  fiyre  kuIvgcii  pyre 
irporpfyaoOcu,,  adds:  'Das  heisst  doch  mit  diirren  Worten:  Dieses  Evan- 
gclium  hat  keine  petrinische  Autoritat;  Petrus  ist  fur  dasselbe  nicht 
verantwortlich;  es  steht  lediglich  auf  sich  selber.'  This  is  only  true  be- 
cause it  is  ambiguous.  The  book  did  not  bear  Peter's  imprimatur;  he 
issued  no  certificate  with  it  to  secure  it  a  legitimate  place  in  the  Church. 
But  though  it  was  sent  out  on  its  own  merits  it  had  Peter's  preaching 


HISTORICAL   CRITICISM   OF   MARK      159 

If  we  turn  from  this  tradition  to  the  gospel  itself  we 
find  significant  features  in  the  narrative  by  which  it  is 
confirmed.  Detail  begins  in  Mark  with  the  hour  at 
which  Peter  and  Andrew  are  called  and  enter  into  more 
or  less  constant  attendance  upon  Jesus  (ch.  1  16  ff).  The 
one  full  Sabbath  day  which  is  narrated  in  the  gospel 
centres  round  Simon's  house  (i29ff).  When  the  next 
morning  early  Jesus,  who  had  retired  into  a  desert  place 
to  pray,  was  'hunted  down,'  it  was  by  'Simon  and  they 
that  were  with  him';  we  can  imagine  how  Peter  in  tell- 
ing the  story  simply  said  'we.'  When  Jesus  appoints 
the  Twelve,  we  are  told  how  He  gave  Simon  the  sur- 
name Peter,  though  no  explanation  of  the  new  name  is 
given.  At  a  later  stage — at  what,  indeed,  it  was  once 
customary  to  regard  as  the  crisis  and  the  turning-point 
in  the  career  of  Jesus — it  is  Peter  who  confesses  Jesus 
to  be  the  Christ;  and  in  close  connexion  with  the  first 
prediction  of  the  Passion,  which  is  the  immediate  sequel, 
it  is  Peter  who  remonstrates  with  Jesus,  and  draws  down 
upon  himself  a  severe  rebuke  (829ff).  It  is  Peter  again 
who,  when  the  rich  ruler  refuses  to  sell  all  that  he  has, 
as  a  preliminary  to  following  Jesus,  reminds  the  Master 
that  He  and  His  companions  have  done  what  had  proved 
too  hard  for  this  promising  recruit,  and  tacitly  at  least 
inquires  what  reward  they  shall  have.  In  the  closing 
scenes  of  the  gospel  he  is  still  more  conspicuous.  He  is 
one  of  the  little  party  to  whom  the  prophetic  discourse 
of  Jesus  is  addressed  on  the  Mount  of  Olives  (13  3  ff) ; 
we  are  told  in  vivid  terms  how  he  boasted  of  his  devotion 
to  Jesus,  how  he  was  reproached  in  the  garden  that  he 
could  not  watch  with  his  Master  one  hour,  how  in  spite 

behind  it;  and  the  writer's  qualification,  according  to  the  very  passage 
on  which  Harnack  bases  these  strong  assertions,  was  his  long  and  familiar 
acquaintance  with  this  preaching  (uoav  aKoXovfir/rravra  avru  -rrdppuftev  ml 
(tEfivTjfihov  to)v  "Kex^evtov).  It  is  in  this  sense  it  is  said  to  have,  and  does 
have,  Peter's  authority. 


160  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

of  repeated  warnings  he  denied  Him  with  oaths  and 
curses;  we  are  told  also  of  his  swift  and  deep  repentance 
(14 27  ff).  Finally  (in  ch.  16  7)  there  is  the  message  of  the 
angels  to  the  women  at  the  tomb:  Go  tell  His  disciples 
and  Peter  that  He  goeth  before  you  into  Galilee— a 
message  which,  as  has  been  already  observed,  justifies 
the  inference  that  this  gospel  originally  closed  with  an 
appearance  of  Jesus  to  the  eleven,  but  either  added  to 
that  or  combined  with  it  an  appearing,  to  some  special 
intent,  to  Peter.  It  is  quite  true  that  all  these  things 
about  Peter  might  have  been  known  and  told  by  some 
other  than  himself.  When,  however,  we  notice  the 
peculiar  character  of  the  events  which  make  up  the  first 
exciting  day;  when  we  consider  that  incidents  in  the 
life  of  Jesus  are  depicted  only  from  the  calling  of  Peter 
onward;  when  we  review,  especially,  the  circumstantial 
and  vivid  narrative  of  the  closing  chapters  in  which  the 
apostle  plays  so  mournful  a  part,  it  is  impossible  to  come  to 
any  other  conclusion  than  that  the  tradition  preserved  by 
Papias  is  confirmed.  That  tradition  is  not  of  the  nature 
of  a  learned  deduction;  it  is  given  as  a  piece  of  informa- 
tion by  one  who  was  in  a  position  to  know  what  he  was 
speaking  about,  but  it  is  supported  by  an  examination 
of  the  gospel  itself.  It  is  quite  safe  to  assume,  then, 
that  in  some  real  sense  the  preaching  of  Peter  underlies 
the  gospel  of  Mark.  The  date  at  which  the  gospel  was 
composed  cannot  be  precisely  determined,  but  there  is 
a  growing  preponderance  of  opinion  which  puts  it  in  the 
sixties  of  the  Christian  era,  before,  though  not  long  be- 
fore, the  destruction  of  Jerusalem.  l 

This  early  date  and  apostolic  connexion  are  not  to  be 
underrated.     We  cannot  indeed  presume  upon  them  so 

1  Harnack  puts  it,  as  a  probability,  between  65  and  70:  Die  Chronolo- 
gic der  altchristlichen  Litter atur,  i.  718;  J.  Weiss  between  64  and  66: 
Die  Schrijten  des  Neuen  Testaments,  i.  61. 


HISTORICAL   CRITICISM   OF   MARK      161 

far  as  to  say  that  we  have  the  testimony  of  an  eye-witness 
for  everything  recorded  in  Mark,  but  they  have,  un- 
doubtedly, historical  importance.  They  prove  that  in 
the  life  and  experience  of  one  man  at  least  there  was  no 
radical  inconsistency,  no  breach  of  continuity,  between 
an  actual  acquaintance  with  Jesus  as  He  lived  on  earth 
and  the  Christian  attitude  to  Jesus  as  the  object  of  faith. 
The  idea  of  much  modern  criticism  of  the  gospels  is  that 
'Jesus'  can  be  pleaded  against  'the  Christ,'  'history' 
invoked  to  discredit  'faith';  but  the  primary  fact  which 
we  have  to  go  upon  is  that  the  very  man  who  stood  closest 
to  the  historical  Jesus  appealed  to  the  historical  knowl- 
edge of  Him  to  vindicate  and  evoke  faith.  It  is  quite 
possible  that  at  one  point  or  another  there  may  be  sec- 
ondary elements  in  the  representation  of  Jesus  by  Mark. 
It  is  quite  possible  that  at  one  point  or  another  the  Chris- 
tian teaching  with  which  the  evangelist  was  familiar 
may  have  left  traces  on  his  language  which  are  sug- 
gestive rather  of  the  period  at  which  he  wrote  than  of  that 
concerning  which  he  writes.  Instances  of  either  must  be 
judged  upon  their  merits.  When  we  consider,  however, 
that  the  gospel  of  Mark  was  composed  within  thirty  or 
forty  years  of  the  death  of  Jesus,  that  the  subject  with 
which  it  deals  had  been  the  matter  of  incessant  and  public 
teaching  throughout  this  period,  and  that  the  narrative 
rests,  as  we  have  seen,  at  its  beginning,  its  crisis,  and  its 
close,  upon  the  authority  of  an  immediate  and  intimate 
disciple,  we  shall  probably  be  disposed  to  infer  that  the 
presumptions  are  strongly  in  favour  of  its  historical 
character.  Certainly  we  shall  not  feel  at  liberty  to  pro- 
nounce anything  unhistorical  merely  because  it  helps  to 
make  Christianity  intelligible,  or  to  evince  the  continuity 
between  the  historical  life  of  Jesus  and  the  life  of  the 
Christian  Church. 
There  are  cruder  and  subtler  ways  in  which  this  has 


i62  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

already  been  done.  A  scholar  who  admits  the  evidence 
which  connects  the  second  gospel  with  the  preaching  of 
Peter  proceeds  to  distinguish  in  the  narrative  what  can 
and  what  cannot  claim  to  be  covered  by  this  apostolic 
testimony.  His  criterion  is  the  very  simple  one  that 
everything  supernatural — perhaps  one  should  say  every- 
thing too  supernatural — must  be  excluded.  As  such 
things  cannot  possibly  have  taken  place,  they  cannot 
possibly  rest  on  the  word  of  an  eye-witness.  This  short 
and  easy  method  of  dealing  with  certain  elements  in  the 
gospel  story  is  applied  with  cheerful  confidence,  for  ex- 
ample, by  Von  Soden. 1  It  was  more  plausible  to  argue 
thus  when  the  gospels  were  dated  in  the  second  century, 
and  legends  had  had  time  and  space  to  grow;  it  is  not 
so  easy  to  believe  that  the  faith  of  Christians — for  it  is 
always  faith  which  is  the  parent  of  the  marvellous — could 
deform  or  transfigure  the  story  of  Jesus  in  the  lifetime  of 
those  who  were  familiar  with  Him,  under  their  very  eyes, 
while  they  were  engaged  in  bearing  their  own  testimony 
to  Him,  and  had,  so  far  as  we  have  any  means  of  judging, 
a  lively  sense  of  the  importance  of  its  historical  truth 
(Acts  i 21  f-,  i  John  i  *).  But  it  is  not  necessary  to  enter 
into  this  subject  here,  for  what  is  ruled  out  by  Von  Soden 
as  too  supernatural  has  hardly  an  immediate  bearing  on 
the  question  in  which  we  are  interested.  Far  more  im- 
portant in  its  issues,  and  far  subtler  in  itself,  is  the  criti- 
cism of  Wellhausen.  There  is  a  section  in  the  book — 
that  which  extends  from  chap.  8  27  to  chap.  10  45 — which, 
to  put  his  opinion  bluntly,  is  Christian,  and  therefore  not 
historical.  The  framework  of  time  and  space  is  the  same 
as  in  the  earlier  chapters,  but  there  is  a  deep  inward  dis- 
tinction. 'Here,'  as  it  is  put  by  Wellhausen,  whose 
language   is  reproduced  in   what    follows,2    '  begins   the 

1  Die  wichtigsten  Fragen  im  Leben  Jesu,  29  ff. 

2  Das  Evangelium  Marci,  65  f .     Einleitung  in  die  drei  ersten  Evangelien, 
81,  f.,  113. 


HISTORICAL  CRITICISM   OF  MARK      163 

gospel  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term,  the  gospel  as  the 
apostles  preached  it;  till  now  there  has  been  little  trace 
of  it.  The  resolve  to  go  to  Jerusalem,  which  does  not 
seem  to  be  occasioned  by  the  Passover,  produces  a  sur- 
prising change.  A  transfigured  Jesus  stands  before  us, 
and  the  two  healing  miracles  which  are  still  interspersed 
are  positively  incongruous.  Jesus  no  longer  teaches  uni- 
versal truth,  He  prophesies  regarding  His  own  person. 
He  no  longer  addresses  the  people,  but  a  limited  circle 
of  His  disciples.  He  discloses  to  them  His  nature  and 
His  destiny.  He  does  this,  too,  in  a  purely  esoteric 
fashion;  they  must  not  tell  any  one  till  after  His  prophecy 
regarding  Himself  has  been  fulfilled;  nay,  until  then  they 
do  not  understand  it  themselves.  The  occasion  of  re- 
nouncing His  former  reserve  with  them  was  provided  by 
Peter's  confession,  Thou  art  the  Messiah.  He  Himself 
evoked  and  accepted  this  confession,  yet  in  the  same 
instant  He  corrected  it:  He  is  not  the  Messiah  who  is 
to  restore  the  Kingdom  of  Israel,  but  quite  another.  It 
is  not  to  set  up  the  Kingdom  that  He  goes  to  Jerusalem, 
but  to  be  crucified.  Through  suffering  and  death  He 
enters  into  the  Messianic  glory,  and  only  in  this  way  can 
others  enter.  The  Kingdom  of  God  is  no  Jewish  King- 
dom, it  is  destined  only  for  certain  elect  individuals,  the 
disciples.  The  idea  that  fierdvota,  repentance,  is  still 
possible  for  the  nation  is  completely  abandoned.  Instead 
of  a  call  to  repent,  addressed  to  all,  comes  the  summons 
to  follow,  which  can  only  be  fulfilled  by  a  few.  The  con- 
ception of  following  now  loses  its  literal  meaning  and 
assumes  a  higher  one.  What  is  involved  is  no  longer  as 
hitherto  attendance  on  Jesus  in  His  lifetime,  going  with 
Him  where  He  goes;  the  main  thing  is  to  follow  Him  to 
death.  As  imitatio  Jesu,  following  is  possible  even  after 
He  dies,  or  rather  it  first  becomes  possible  then  in  the 
strict  sense.     The  Cross  is  to  be  borne  after  Him.     The 


164  JESUS   AND  THE   GOSPEL 

disciples  must  for  the  Kingdom's  sake  break  completely 
with  national  and  domestic  ties;  they  must  sacrifice 
everything  that  binds  them  to  life,  and  even  life  itself. 
Reform  is  impossible:  the  hostility  of  the  world  can 
never  be  overcome.  The  breach  with  the  world  is  de- 
manded which  leads  to  martyrdom.  The  situation  and 
the  mood  of  the  primitive  Church  are  here  reflected 
beforehand  by  Jesus  as  He  goes  to  meet  His  fate.  On 
this  depends  the  profound  pathos  in  which  the  introduc- 
tion to  the  story  of  the  Passion  surpasses  the  latter  itself.' 
The  facts  which  are  here  summarised  have  long  been 
familiar:  what  is  open  to  question  is  the  explanation  and 
the  historical  estimate  of  them.  According  to  Well- 
hausen,  this  section  of  Mark,  which  contains  or  pre- 
supposes the  Christian  gospel,  is  for  that  very  reason  not 
historical  at  all.  It  is  not  conceived  in  the  mind  or  in 
the  historical  situation  of  Jesus:  what  is  reflected  in  it  is 
the  position  and  mood  of  the  primitive  martyr  Church. 
Jesus,  as  Wellhausen  puts  it  elsewhere,  here  transports 
Himself  nor  merely  into  His  own  future,  but  into  the 
future  of  His  Church,  whose  foundation  was  His  death 
and  resurrection:  and  this,  it  is  assumed,  we  cannot 
suppose  Him  to  have  done.  On  this  we  should  remark, 
in  the  first  place,  that  there  is  something  essentially  false 
in  the  contrast  assumed  to  exist  between  the  mind  and 
historical  situation  of  Jesus,  and  the  position  and  mood 
of  the  primitive  martyr  Church.  Jesus  was  Himself  a 
martyr,  and  the  situation  in  which  He  found  Himself,  in 
the  last  weeks  and  months  of  His  life,  was  to  all  intents 
and  purposes  that  in  which  the  primitive  Church  found 
itself  after  His  death.  That  the  disciples  did  not  under- 
stand what  He  taught  them  about  His  death  is  no  doubt 
true,  but  we  cannot  infer  from  this  that  it  is  a  mistake  on 
the  part  of  the  evangelist  to  represent  Him,  in  the  cir- 
cumstances of  that  time,  as  teaching  anything  about  His 


HISTORICAL  CRITICISM   OF  MARK      165 

death  at  all.  The  disciples'  difficulty  in  understanding 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  historical  situation.  Quite 
apart  from  that  situation  and  its  circumstances,  the  idea 
that  the  destined  Christ  should  die  a  violent  death  at  the 
hands  of  men  was  so  disconcerting  as  to  be  incredible  to 
the  Twelve.  It  required  the  event  and  its  sequel — the 
Resurrection — to  open  and  reconcile  their  minds  to  it. 
For  Jews  in  general  it  remained  as  incredible  and  unin- 
telligible in  the  days  of  the  martyr  Church  as  it  had  been 
for  His  followers  while  Jesus  was  yet  with  them.  It  does 
not  follow,  because  words  ascribed  to  Jesus  have  an 
application  for  disciples  after  His  death,  that  these  words 
were  invented  then  and  only  put  into  His  lips  by  antici- 
pation.1 Jesus  could  anticipate.  Indeed  we  may  say 
that  like  every  one  who  thinks  of  leaving  the  world  and 
of  leaving  behind  in  it  those  who  are  dear  to  him,  He 
could  not  but  anticipate.  He  transported  Himself  in- 
stinctively into  the  future  and  addressed  Himself  to  it. 
When  we  come  to  examine  the  texts  in  detail,  we  shall 
see  whether  or  how  far  there  is  anything  in  them  which 
may  be  pronounced  impossible  in  His  historical  situation. 
Further,  it  must  be  observed  that  the  critical  change 
in  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  which  sets  in  at  ch.  8 27,  has 
much  to  support  it.  It  is  not  inconceivable,  but  inher- 
ently credible  and  likely,  that  such  a  change  should  have 
come  with  the  crisis  in  the  ministry  of  Jesus  with  which 
Mark  connects  it — a  crisis  in  which  the  antagonism  of 
His  own  people  had  driven  Him  beyond  their  borders, 
and  led  Him  to  concentrate  His  efforts  on  the  training 
of  the  Twelve.  That  there  is  such  a  crisis  intended  in 
the  narrative  the  writer  must  still  believe,  in  spite  of 
recent  attempts  to  disintegrate  the  gospel  and  deprive 
the  sequences  in  it  of  all  significance.  It  takes  a  great 
deal  of  courage  to  question  the  historicity  of  the  first 

1  See  an  admirable  page  in  Harnack,  Spriiche  und  Reden  Jesu,  143. 


166  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

scenes  in  this  ' Christian'  section — that  in  which  Peter 
confesses  Jesus  to  be  the  Christ,  an  incident  enshrined 
in  every  form  of  the  evangelic  tradition;  and  that  in 
which  Jesus  rebukes  Peter  as  the  Satan  for  protesting 
against  the  idea  that  the  Christ  should  suffer.  But  if 
these  scenes  are  admittedly  historical,  it  is  hard  to  see  on 
what  ground  anything  that  comes  after  is  questioned. 
Nothing  that  comes  after  is  more  unequivocally  'Chris- 
tian.' To  believe  in  Jesus  as  the  Messiah  who  through 
death  enters  into  glory — to  believe  in  Him  and  to  follow 
Him  on  the  path  of  suffering  and  martyrdom — this  is 
indeed  Christian;  but  it  is  a  conception  of  Christianity 
which  there  is  no  need  whatever  to  remove  from  the  life 
of  the  historical  Jesus.  The  mere  fact  that  it  was  intelli- 
gible, relevant,  applicable,  after  He  died  and  rose  again, 
does  not  prove  that  it  was  not  as  intelligible,  relevant, 
and  applicable,  while  He  lived. 

It  must  be  added  that  there  is  a  question-begging 
exaggeration  in  Wellhausen's  list  of  the  'so  to  speak  tech- 
nical ideas  and  words'  which  are  characteristic  of  this 
section,  and  set  it  in  relief  against  the  gospel  as  a  whole: 
1  the  Son  of  Man,  the  gospel,  the  name  of  Jesus,  this  world 
and  the  world  to  come,  the  Kingdom  of  God,  the  <W£a, 
life,  salvation,  following  in  the  higher  sense,  minis- 
try, the  [itxpoX  7ci<jTs6ovT£:<sy  the  (TxdvdaXa.1 1  Several  of 
these,  as  a  glance  at  the  Concordance  will  show,  occur 
earlier  in  the  gospel;  most  of  them  can  be  paralleled 
from  an  evangelic  document  which  is  independent  of 
Mark;2  and  not  one  of  them  is  technical  except  in  the 
sense  in  which  any  word  becomes  technical  when  it  is 
applied  in  new  conditions.  But  the  conditions  in  which 
these  words  are  applied  in  the  gospels,  as  will  become 
evident  when  we  examine   them   in  detail — or  such  of 

1  Einleitung  in  die  drei  ersten  Evangclien,  81. 

2  See  Harnack's  list  of  the  substantives  in  Q,  Spruche  U.  Reden  Jesu, 
108  ff. 


HISTORICAL  CRITICISM   OF  MARK      167 

them  as  throw  light  on  our  problem — are  conditions  in 
which  they  may  quite  well  have  been  applied  by  Jesus 
Himself;  on  any  other  hypothesis,  indeed,  the  mind  and 
the  language  of  Christianity  present  insoluble  difficulties. 
It  is  no  doubt  the  case  that  in  this  section  of  Mark  it  is 
conspicuously  impossible  to  see  in  Jesus  nur  ein  Menschen- 
kind,  wie  wir  andern  auch,  but  it  is  impossible  to  accept 
this  personal  prejudice  as  a  principle  of  criticism.  Well- 
hausen  only  puts  it  in  a  new  form  when  with  a  view  to 
discrediting  this  '  Christian '  part  of  the  gospel  he  tells  us 
that  Jesus  was  not  a  Christian  but  a  Jew,  and  not  a  Jew 
who  taught  a  new  faith,  but  only  a  new  and  better  way 
of  doing  the  will  of  God,  which  for  him  as  for  all  his 
countrymen  was  revealed  in  the  Old  Testament.  No 
doubt  He  was  a  Jew,  but  He  was  a  Jew  to  whom  the 
Christian  religion  in  some  way  owes  its  origin;  and  it  is 
not  a  prima  facie  reason  for  scepticism  when  we  find  in 
the  record  of  His  life  hints  or  suggestions  of  what  was 
unquestionably  its  outcome.  To  apply  this  to  the  dis- 
ciple whose  authority,  we  have  seen  reason  to  believe, 
lies  behind  the  narrative:  if  there  was,  as  there  must 
have  been,  a  continuity  of  some  sort  between  Peter's  ex- 
periences with  Jesus  in  His  lifetime  and  his  relation  to 
Him  after  death— if  the  Christian  attitude  to  the  Lord 
is  not  to  appear  as  something  entirely  irrational  and 
groundless,  but  as  something  with  true  antecedents  in 
the  relation  of  His  followers  to  Jesus— the  presumption  is 
that  the  'Christian'  section  of  Mark  is  as  historical  as 
the  rest.  But  possibly  the  one  consideration  which  in- 
fluences criticism  here  most  decisively  is  the  attitude  of 
the  critic  himself  to  the  resurrection.  If  Jesus  did  not 
rise  from  the  dead  at  all,  it  relieves  Him  from  the  re- 
proach of  self-delusion  if  we  assume  that  He  did  not 
anticipate  or  predict  His  rising,  as  in  these  chapters  He 
repeatedly  does.     But  if  He  did  rise  again  on  the  third 


168  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

day — if  His  future  really  included  that  unparalleled  ex- 
perience— it  is  by  no  means  inconceivable  that  a  person 
with  a  destiny  so  extraordinary  should  have  contemplated 
and  spoken  of  it.  If  the  certainties  with  which  we  start 
are  that  Jesus  was  only  a  human  being,  exactly  like  the 
rest  of  us,  and  that  He  had  no  resurrection  on  the  third 
day,  but  only  came  to  life  again  in  the  hearts  of  His 
followers,  then  Mark  8 27  to  10 45  must  seem  radically 
untrue.  But  so  must  a  great  deal  more  in  the  life  of 
Jesus — so  must  everything,  in  short,  which  connects  that 
life  with  Christian  faith.  But  these  certainties  are  as- 
sumed, not  proved,  and  we  can  approach  with  unpreju- 
diced minds  this  as  all  the  other  parts  of  the  gospel.  It 
is  not  doing  anything  but  justice  to  the  whole  of  the  facts 
involved  if  we  say  that  we  ought  to  have  a  bias  in  favour 
of  what  connects  Christianity  with  Jesus,  rather  than  in 
favour  of  ideas  which  fix  a  great  gulf  between  them. 

The  priority  of  Mark  to  Matthew  and  Luke,  its  relation 
to  Peter,  and  its  date  in  the  sixties,  are  the  first  important 
conclusion  of  gospel  criticism.  There  is  a  second  which 
is  perhaps  even  of  higher  interest.  A  comparison  of 
Matthew  and  Luke  shows  not  only  that  each  of  them 
has  embodied  practically  the  whole  of  Mark,  but  that 
each  of  them  has  also  in  common  with  the  other  a  large 
quantity  of  matter  which  is  not  found  in  Mark.  This 
matter  consists  in  the  main  of  words  of  Jesus,  and  it  is 
pretty  generally  agreed  that  besides  Mark,  which  sup- 
plied them  with  the  narrative  outline  which  they  fol- 
low, Matthew  and  Luke  used  a  second  source  which 
supplied  them  with  reports  of  Jesus'  teaching.  Many 
attempts  have  been  made  to  reconstruct  this  document, 
but  naturally  with  precarious  results.1  It  is  easy  to  take 
the  first  step,  and  to  refer  to  it  all  the  matter  which  is 

1  For  the  two  latest,  v.  Harnack's  Spriiche  und  Reden  Jesu;  B.  Weiss, 
Die  Quellen  der  synoptischen  Ueberliejerimg. 


THE   SECOND   PRIMITIVE   SOURCE— Q  169 

common  to  Matthew  and  Luke,  but  wanting  to  Mark. 
But  this  does  not  take  us  far.  It  is  quite  possible  that 
one  of  the  evangelists  may  have  made  extracts  from  it 
which  the  other  ignored.  For  example,  it  contained  an 
account  of  the  ministry  of  the  Baptist  from  which  both 
certainly  borrowed.  But  what  of  the  differences  between 
Matthew  and  Luke  at  this  point?  Matthew  alone  tells 
us  of  a  reluctance  on  John's  part  to  baptize  Jesus  (Matt. 
3  u  f) :  was  this  found  in  the  source  common  to  him 
and  Luke,  but  passed  over  by  the  latter?  Luke  alone 
gives  a  report  of  John's  teaching  to  the  multitudes,  to 
publicans,  and  to  soldiers  (3 10~14) :  was  this  found  in 
the  common  source,  and  similarly  passed  over  by  Mat- 
thew? We  cannot  tell.  The  document  which  both 
our  evangelists  use  may  have  been  more  comprehensive 
than  they  enable  us  to  see.  If  we  notice  the  way  in  which 
they  make  use  of  Mark,  a  document  which  we  have  in 
our  hands,  we  may  even  infer  that  it  was  possible  for 
them  to  omit  what  we  should  regard  as  very  character- 
istic or  interesting  things.  For  instance,  neither  takes 
over  from  Mark  the  fact  that  Jesus  called  the  sons  of 
Zebedee  sons  of  thunder;  neither  mentions  the  irreverent 
exclamation  of  His  friends,  He  is  beside  himself;  neither 
reproduces  the  beautiful  parable  of  the  seed  growing 
spontaneously,  first  the  blade,  then  the  ear,  then  the  full 
corn  in  the  ear;  neither  records  the  singular  miracles  of 
7  31  ff-,  8  22  ff-.  The  story  of  the  widow's  mites,  which  is 
borrowed  by  Luke  but  not  by  Matthew,  shows  us  how 
one  could  take  what  the  other  left,  and  though  the  natural 
inclination  (we  might  think)  would  be  to  take  everything 
good  for  which  there  was  room,  it  is  obviously  possible 
that  there  may  have  been  things  overlooked  by  both.  The 
one  question  of  great  interest  here  is  whether  this  lost 
document  contained  an  account  of  the  Passion  of  Jesus. 
Scholars  are  divided.     B.  Weiss,  who  has  given  unusual  at- 


iyo  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

tention  to  the  subject,  thinks  it  did  not;  and  he  has  been 
followed  by  the  majority,  including  Harnack.  Pro- 
fessor Burkitt,  on  the  other  hand,  inclines  to  believe  it  did. 
While  admitting  that  not  a  single  phrase  in  the  last  three 
chapters  of  Matthew  can  be  supposed  to  come  from  this 
lost  source,  he  points  out  that  some  of  the  peculiar  matter 
in  the  twenty-second  chapter  of  Luke  is  actually  given 
in  earlier  chapters  of  Matthew:  in  other  words,  there  is 
found  in  Luke,  chapter  22,  matter  which  comes  from 
this  lost  source.  But  if  it  be  the  case,  as  it  really  seems 
to  be,  that  Luke  gives  his  extracts  from  this  source  xaffegqs 
— in  the  order  in  which  he  found  them — it  is  clear  that 
the  source  did  tell  things  about  the  Passion,  and  so  was 
in  some  sense  a  gospel  as  truly  at  Mark.1 

The  question,  though  interesting,  is  not  vital.  It  is 
of  less  consequence  to  know  the  exact  compass  of  the 
document  than  to  be  acquainted  with  its  date  and  author- 
ship. Until  quite  recently  it  was  held  by  all  who  ad- 
mitted its  existence  to  be  older  than  Mark.  Opinions 
differed  as  to  whether  he  had  or  had  not  made  use  of  it 
in  his  work,  but  its  antiquity  was  unchallenged.  The 
opinion,  too,  was  widely  spread  that  it  was  of  apostolic 
authorship.  It  was  connected,  perhaps  ingeniously, 
perhaps  also  soundly,  with  another  of  the  traditions 
of  the  Elder  John  preserved  by  Papias.  We  have  al- 
ready quoted  what  this  elder,  an  immediate  disciple  of 
Jesus,  says  about  Mark.  'But  concerning  Matthew,' 
Eusebius  proceeds  in  his  quotation  from  Papias,  'the 
following  statement  is  made  [by  him]:  so  then  Matthew 
composed  the  oracles  in  the  Hebrew  language,  and 
each  one  interpreted  them  as  he  could.' 2     The  expression 

1  Weiss,  Einleitungin  das  Neue  Testament,  §  45;  Die  Quellen  der  synop- 
tischen  Ueberliejerung,  1-96;  Harnack,  Spriiche  und  Reden  Jesu,  88-102; 
Burkitt,  The  Gospel  History  and  its  Transmission,  133;  Journal  0}  Theo- 
logical Studies  (Review  of  Harnack),  viii.  454. 

2  Eusebius,  Hist.  EccL,  iii.  39.  The  translation  is  again  from  Professor 
Gwatkin. 


THE  SECOND   PRIMITIVE   SOURCE— Q  171 

1  composed  the  oracles '  is  probably  identical  in  meaning 
with  'wrote  his  gospel';  but  the  term  ' oracles '  sug- 
gests that  the  main  interest  of  the  work  in  question  is 
to  be  found  in  the  words  of  divine  authority  which  it 
contains.  The  description  would  suit  quite  well  such 
a  document  as  the  vanished  source  used  in  common  by 
our  first  and  third  evangelists;  and  as  our  first  gospel, 
in  the  form  in  which  we  have  it,  is  certainly  not  a  trans- 
lation from  Hebrew  (or  Aramaic),  but  a  writing  based 
chiefly  on  two  sources,  Mark  and  the  one  we  are  now 
discussing,  which  lay  before  the  compiler  (as  they  lay 
before  Luke)  in  Greek,  it  was  open  to  any  one  to  pro- 
pound the  hypothesis  that  the  words  of  Papias  referred 
not  to  our  first  gospel  but  to  the  Aramaic  original  of  the 
source  common  to  it  and  Luke — a  source  which  would 
thus  be  of  immediate  apostolic  authorship,  the  work  of 
Matthew  the  publican.  The  first  gospel  owes  its  char- 
acteristic peculiarity  to  the  fact  that  it  amasses  the  oracles 
of  the  Lord  and  presents  them  so  as  to  minister  to  the 
needs  of  the  Church;  and  as  preserving  in  a  suitable  his- 
torical framework  the  substance  of  the  publican  apostle's 
work,  it  might  reasonably,  though  not  with  strict  accuracy, 
be  called  the  gospel  according  to  Matthew.  This  com- 
bination of  the  data  gains  in  plausibility  when  we  con- 
sider that  the  lost  source  under  consideration  originally 
existed  in  an  Aramaic  form;  !  and  although,  in  the  nature 
of  the  case,  it  does  not  admit  of  demonstration,  it  has  in 
the  judgment  of  the  writer  a  far  higher  degree  of  probabil- 
ity than  any  other  hypothesis  with  which  he  is  acquainted. 
It  would,  of  course,  be  thoroughly  discredited  if  we 
could  accept  the  conclusion  of  Wellhausen,  who  frorf 
internal  evidence  infers  that  the  lost  source  of  Matthew 
and  Luke  was  somewhat  inferior  to  Mark  in  age,  and 
altogether    inferior    to    it    in    authority.     His    most    im- 

1  See  Wellhausen 's  notes  on  Luke  6  23,  n 41. 


1 72  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

portant  argument  is  the  general  one  that  the  process  of 
*  Christianising'  the  material,  which  in  Mark  is  practi- 
cally limited  to  the  section  chapter  8  27-io  45,  has  in  this 
document  been  carried  through  from  beginning  to  end. 
Jesus  everywhere  speaks  to  His  disciples  as  Christians, 
and  that  in  a  predominantly  esoteric  fashion.  It  is 
not  only  when  He  has  His  Passion  in  view  that  He  re- 
veals Himself  to  them  as  the  Messiah  who  is  destined 
to  pass  through  death  to  glory;  on  the  contrary,  He 
comes  forward  as  Messiah  from  the  first;  His  preach- 
ing throughout  is  directed  to  this  end — to  found  His 
Church,  and  in  doing  so  to  lay  the  foundation  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God  upon  earth.1  What  has  been  already 
said  of  Wellhausen's  estimate  of  the  'Christian'  section 
of  Mark  can  be  applied  here  also:  even  if  we  find  in  the 
source  with  which  we  are  concerned  features  which 
prove  that  there  was  no  solution  of  continuity  between 
the  life  of  Jesus  and  the  life  of  the  Church,  we  shall  not 
for  that  reason  hold  that  such  features  are  necessarily 
unhistorical.  We  shall  not  feel  obliged  to  argue  that 
the  Church  has  carried  back  its  faith  and  experience 
into  the  life  of  Jesus,  and  is  putting  its  own  mind  into 
the  lips  of  its  Master.  Even  if  it  were  the  case — which 
we  do  not  believe — that  the  lost  document  was  more  recent 
than  Mark,  it  would  be  a  stupendous  and  groundless 
assumption  that  Mark  meant  to  tell  us  all  that  was  really 
known  of  the  words  and  deeds  of  Jesus;  and  that  every- 
thing in  Matthew  or  Luke  which  goes  beyond  him  was 
either  unknown  to  him  or  regarded  by  him  as  of  no  value. 
The  contents  of  the  source  which  Matthew  and  Luke 
used  in  common  besides  Mark  did  not  come  into  exist- 
ence in  a  moment.  They  were  not  produced  out  of 
nothing  by  the  author  who  wrote  them  down.  It  is  as 
certain  as  anything  can  be  in  history  that  in  substance 

1  Wellhausen,  Einleitung  in  die  drei  ersten  Evangelien,  84. 


HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  OF  Q  173 

they  were  being  taught  in  Christian  churches  at  the  very 
same  time  and  under  the  very  same  conditions  in  which  the 
contents  of  Mark's  gospel  were  being  taught.  Luke  did 
not  write  to  the  excellent  Theophilus  to  tell  him  what  he 
had  never  heard  before,  but  that  he  might  know  the  cer- 
tainty about  the  things  in  which  he  had  been  instructed. 
Even  if  we  cannot  identify  the  author  of  this  second  source, 
nor  fix  the  very  year  in  which  he  wrote,  we  can  be  confident 
that  it  is  for  all  practical  purposes  contemporary  with 
Mark  and  equal  with  it  in  authority.  Both  have  behind 
them  the  authority  of  the  teaching,  and  of  the  teachers, 
who  dominated  the  Church  in  the  'sixties. 

Nor  is  this  authority  prejudiced  when  we  admit,  as  far 
as  we  need  to  admit,  that  the  word  of  Jesus  fructified  in 
men's  minds,  and  that  there  may  be  cases  in  which  it  is 
impossible  to  draw  the  line  between  the  very  words 
which  Jesus  uttered  and  the  thoughts  to  which  these 
words  gave  birth  in  the  minds  to  which  they  were  ad- 
dressed. Wellhausen  argues  that  the  spirit  of  Jesus 
lived  on  in  the  Church,  and  that  the  Church  not  only 
produced  the  gospel  of  which  Jesus  is  the  object,  but  also 
gave  a  further  development  to  His  ethics.  This  develop- 
ment took  place,  no  doubt,  on  the  foundation  he  had 
laid;  and  that  in  which  His  spirit  expressed  itself  seemed 
to  have  intrinsically  the  same  value  as  what  He  Himself 
would  have  said  in  similar  case.  It  is  not  with  the  idea 
here  that  we  have  any  quarrel,  but  with  the  inconsiderate 
application  of  it.  'There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  many 
of  the  words  of  Jesus  were  preserved  mainly  by  being 
preached,  and  that  they  were  liable  in  this  way  to  a 
certain,  or  rather  an  uncertain,  amount  of  modification 
with  a  view  to  bringing  out  the  point  of  them  in  one  or 
another  set  of  circumstances.  Every  minister  in  preach- 
ing from  a  text  sometimes  expands  the  text  in  the  person, 
so  to  speak,  of  him  who  uttered  it;    and  if  the  original 


r74  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

speaker  was  Jesus,  he  puts  words  into  Jesus'  mouth 
freely  in  doing  so.  In  this  sense  Wellhausen  is  right  in 
saying  that  it  is  the  discourses  in  the  gospels,  and  not 
the  narratives,  that  are  most  liable  to  '  development '  in 
the  course  of  time;  contrary  to  the  older  criticism  which 
held  that  while  legendary  stories  grew  with  a  rank  and 
marvellous  fertility,  the  discourses  of  Jesus  were  com- 
paratively trustworthy.  But  the  modern  preacher  who 
'develops'  a  word  of  Jesus  in  the  person  of  the  Speaker 
knows  what  he  is  doing;  and  it  is  only  natural  to  assume 
that  the  primitive  preacher  or  catechist  knew  also.  He 
did  not  mean  that  the  words  he  used  were  literally  Jesus' 
words;  they  were  the  word  of  the  Lord  as  he  under- 
stood it.  This,  however,  is  quite  a  different  thing  from 
the  wholesale  ascription  to  Jesus  in  a  historical  book — 
and  when  all  is  said  and  done  the  gospels  are  meant  to 
be  read  as  narratives  of  fact — of  a  great  mass  of  dis- 
courses which  have  no  immediate  connexion  with  Him. 
The  result  of  Wellhausen's  criticism,  applied  as  he  ap- 
plies it,  is,  as  Julicher  has  said,1  that  the  most  profound, 
simple  and  moving  elements  in  the  gospels  are  set  down, 
simply  because  our  literary  evidence  for  them  is  supposed 
to  be  later  than  Mark,  as  of  no  historical  value.  The 
primitive  Church  is  made  to  appear  richer,  greater  and 
freer  than  its  Head.  For  this,  however,  analogies  are 
completely  wanting;  if  the  gospels  as  we  have  them  are 
the  fruits  of  faith,  and  not  a  historical  testimony  to  Jesus, 
they  are  such  fruits  as  have  no  example  elsewhere.  How 
did  it  come  to  pass  that  these  fruits  so  suddenly  ceased 
to  appear  on  the  tree  of  faith?  How  did  its  fertility 
come  to  an  end?  And  when  Christian  faith  was  yield- 
ing such  gracious  fruits  apparently  without  conscious 
effort,  when  it  uttered  itself  spontaneously  in  the  parables 
of  the  Kingdom  or  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  how  are  we 

J  Theologische  Litteraturzeitung,  1905,  col.  615. 


HISTORICAL   CRITICISM   OF  Q  175 

to  explain  the  fact  that  neither  Paul  nor  any  other  New 
Testament  writer— and  surely  they  all  had  faith— could 
ever  produce  a  page  which  even  remotely  reminded  us  of 
the  manner  of  the  Lord?  Their  whole  attitude  to  the 
realities  with  which  they  deal— to  God  and  man  and  truth 
—is  other  than  His,  and  even  when  they  speak  in  the  power 
of  His  spirit  it  is  not  in  His  style  and  tone.  After  all,  the 
words  of  Jesus  have  a  seal  of  their  own,  and  are  not  so 
easily  counterfeited.  It  is  true,  as  Wellhausen  says,  that 
truth  attests  only  itself,  not  its  author;  but  when  the  various 
self-attesting  truths  coalesce  into  the  unity  of  the  Speaker 
and  His  life — when,  as  Deissmann  says,  they  are  seen  tc 
be  not  separate  pearls  threaded  on  one  string,  but  flashes  of 
one  and  the  same  diamond — the  truth  and  its  author  are 
not  separable.  The  sum  of  self- attesting  truths  which 
finds  its  vital  unity  in  Jesus  guarantees  His  historical 
reality  in  a  character  corresponding  to  these  truths  them- 
selves, and  the  more  we  come  under  the  impression  of 
this  character,  the  less  disposed  shall  we  be  either  to  pre- 
scribe its  measure  beforehand,  or  to  assume  that  vital 
and  conscious  relations  between  it  and  the  Christianity 
in  which  it  somehow  issued  are  necessarily  unhistorical. 
That  Jesus  left  no  written  record  of  Himself  is  true.  It 
is  true  also  that  what  He  wished  to  leave  behind  Him  in 
the  world  was  not  a  protocol  of  His  words  and  deeds,  a 
documentary  attestation  of  them  such  as  historians  or 
lawyers  might  require;  what  He  craved  was  a  spiritual 
remembrance,  a  living  witness  in  the  souls  of  men  born 
again  by  His  words  of  eternal  life.  But  the  very  men  on 
whom  He  made  the  impression  which  made  them  Chris- 
tians, the  very  men  who  hung  on  His  lips  because  His 
words  were  what  they  were,  would  not  easily  lose  all  sense 
of  distinction  between  His  words  and  thoughts  and  their 
own.  The  very  power  and  wonder  of  the  words  would 
preserve  their  singularity,  and,  as  has  already  been  re- 


176  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

marked,  the  conspicuous  fact  in  the  New  Testament  is 
not  the  imperceptible  way  in  which  the  words  of  Jesus 
merge  into  those  of  Christians,  but  the  incomparable  and 
solitary  relief  in  which  they  stand  out  by  themselves. 
The  possibility  of  modification,  of  deflection,  of  '  Chris- 
tianising' even,  in  applying  these  words  in  any  given 
situation,  is  one  which  need  not  be  questioned  before- 
hand; the  mind  is  subject  to  its  own  laws,  and  the  spirit 
has  its  own  liberties,  even  in  dealing  with  the  words  of 
Jesus.  But  the  broad  contrast  which  has  just  been 
pointed  out  remains,  and  it  justifies  us,  not  only  in  ex- 
amining each  instance  on  its  merits,  but  in  approaching 
the  examination  with  a  presumption  in  favour  of  the  wit- 
nesses rather  than  against  them.  When  we  appeal  to  the 
discourses  of  Jesus  in  Matthew  and  Luke  for  testimony 
to  the  mind  of  Jesus  regarding  Himself  or  His  work, 
this  is  the  presumption  which  will  determine  our  atti- 
tude. 

For  the  purpose  which  we  have  in  view  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  refer  further  to  the  critical  analysis  of  the  gospels. 
We  shall  confine  ourselves  to  the  gospel  of  Mark,  and 
to  that  second  source,  common  to  Matthew  and  Luke 
which  in  accordance  with  custom  will  be  cited  as  Q. 
The  limits  of  Q,  as  soon  as  we  go  beyond  the  matter  which 
is  guaranteed  as  belonging  to  it  by  its  occurrence  both  in 
Matthew  and  Luke,  are  quite  uncertain;  and  therefore 
we  shall  confine  our  investigation  to  the  passages  which 
have  this  guarantee.1     It  is  impossible  to  lay  down  before- 

1  This  is  the  course  followed  by  Harnack  in  his  own  investigation  of  Q — ■ 
Spriiche  u.  Reden  Jesu;  and  in  his  review  of  Weiss's  recent  works,  Die 
Quellen  des  Lukasevangeliums  and  Die  Quellen  der  synoptischen  Ueber- 
liejeriing  (in  Theol.  Litter aturzeitung,  1908  :  460  ff.),  though  he  admits 
that  Weiss  gives  an  essentially  correct  description  of  the  characteristics 
of  Q,  he  can  lay  no  stress  on  those  passages  in  Weiss's  reconstruction  of 
it  which  depend  upon  one  witness  only.  Weiss  is  practically  certain  of 
these,  and  of  his  restoration  of  them  (Aufstellnng  der  Matthausquelle);  to 
Harnack  they  are  only  possibilities.  The  general  impression  left  on  the 
mind  of  the  writer  by  the  study  of  all  these  works  is  that  far  greater  allow- 


THE   BAPTISM   OF  JESUS  V  177 


hand  the  precise  line  which  the  investigation  must  follow. 
In  the  opening  sections  of  the  gospel — those  which  narrate 
the  baptism  and  the  temptation  of  Jesus — we  have  both 
sources  to  appeal  to;  when  we  pass  this  point  it  will  be 
convenient  to  consider  first  the  testimony  of  Q,  and  then 
that  of  Mark,  to  the  self-consciousness  of  Jesus.  In 
pursuing  this  course,  the  method  adopted  must  be  left  to 
justify  itself  by  the  result.  Though  no  stress  can  be  laid 
on  the  chronology  of  the  gospels,  there  is  an  order  in 
them  of  some  kind,  and  as  far  as  possible  that  will  be 
followed. 

(b)  Detailed  study  of  the  earliest  sources  as  illustrating 
the  self-consciousness  of  Jesus. 

The  Baptism  of  Jesus 

(Mark  1  9*n;  Matt.  3  13"17;  Luke  3  21f') 

Both  in  Mark  and  in  Q  Jesus  is  introduced  to  us  in 
connexion  with  John  the  Baptist.  He  comes  upon  the 
stage  of  history  when  He  presents  Himself  to  John  on 
the  banks  of  the  Jordan  to  be  baptized.  The  synoptic 
gospels  recognise  John  as  the  forerunner  of  Jesus,  but 
they  do  not  record  any  testimony  of  John  to  Jesus  as  the 
Christ.     John,  probably  in  the  sense  of  his  own  weakness, 

ance  must  be  made  than  is  made  in  any  of  them  for  the  influence  upon  the 
evangelists  of  other  than  documentary  evidence  in  the  writing  of  the  gos- 
pels. Assuming  that  Luke  knew  a  gospel  narrative — say  the  healing  of 
the  paralytic  or  the  parable  of  the  sower — both  from  Mark  and  Q,  we 
must  remember  that  as  a  person  living  in  the  Christian  Church  it  is  a 
thousand  to  one  that  he  knew  it  by  having  heard  it  told  independently  of 
either.  Even  if  he  tells  it  in  the  main  on  the  basis  of  Mark  or  of  Q,  we 
are  not  bound  to  explain  his  divergences  from  either  by  conscious  motives 
discoverable  by  us;  to  the  writer,  in  spite  of  Weiss's  claim  and  of  Harnack's 
assent  to  it  (ut  supra,  465),  it  is  as  certain  as  anything  can  be  that  thou- 
sands of  the  divergences  for  which  ingenious  explanations  are  given  are 
purely  accidental,  and  have  no  motive  or  meaning  whatever.  In  other 
words,  'oral  tradition'  is  a  vera  causa  operating  far  more  extensively  than 
the  criticism  of  Weiss  is  disposed  to  admit. 


178  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

and  of  his  inadequacy  to  the  task  of  regenerating  Israel, 
spoke  of  the  Coming  One  as  mightier  than  himself, 
and  as  able  to  baptize  with  Holy  Spirit  and  fire;  but  he 
did  not  expressly  identify  Him  with  Jesus.  Yet  when 
we  consider  the  extraordinarily  high  estimate  which 
Jesus  had  of  John,  and  reflect  that  of  all  His  contempora- 
ries John  alone  seems  to  have  made  any  spiritual  impression 
on  Him,  these  lofty  anticipations  of  the  Coming  One 
may  not  seem  quite  irrelevant  to  Jesus'  consciousness 
of  Himself.  It  is  probably  true  to  say  that  He  felt  Him- 
self, when  He  entered  on  His  work,  called  and  qualified 
to  fulfil  John's  anticipations — the  holder  of  a  mightier 
power  than  the  last  of  the  prophets,  and  able  in  virtue 
of  it  to  succeed  where  he  had  failed. 

But  be  this  as  it  may,  we  come  to  a  point  of  critical 
importance  with  the  baptism  of  Jesus  Himself.  It  was 
narrated  in  Q,  as  we  can  infer  with  certainty  from  the 
Temptation  story,  which  both  Matthew  and  Luke  have 
taken  from  this  source,  and  which  in  all  its  elements 
refers  to  the  Baptism  and  to  the  voice  which  then  de- 
clared Jesus  Son  of  God.  It  is  not  Q's  narrative  of 
the  Baptism,  however,  which  has  been  preserved  by  our 
evangelists;  at  this  point,  with  slight  modifications,  both 
Matthew  and  Luke  follow  Mark.  The  record,  marvellous 
as  it  is,  is  of  the  simplest.  '  And  it  came  to  pass  in  those 
days  that  Jesus  came  from  Nazareth  of  Galilee  and  was 
baptized  by  John  in  the  Jordan.  And  straightway 
coming  up  out  of  the  water  He  saw  the  heavens  rent  asun- 
der, and  the  Spirit  as  a  dove  descending  upon  Him :  and 
a  voice  came  out  of  the  heavens,  Thou  art  My  beloved 
Son,  in  Thee  I  am  well  pleased'  (Mark  i  Q-u).  The 
fact  that  the  baptism  of  Jesus  came  at  a  later  period  to 
present  difficulties  to  the  Christian  mind — difficulties 
which  may  be  reflected  in  Matt.  3  u  f-  to  which  there 
is  no  parallel  in  Mark  or  Luke — is  at  least  an  argument 


THE   BAPTISM   OF   JESUS  179 

that  it  actually  took  place.1  We  can  hardly,  indeed, 
imagine  a  period  at  which  there  would  not  be  difficulty 
in  the  idea  that  a  person  who  was  himself  the  object  of 
religious  faith — and  this,  as  we  have  shown  above,  was 
always  the  character  of  Jesus  in  the  Church — should 
submit  to  be  baptized  with  a  baptism  of  repentance 
which  looked  to  remission  of  sins  (Mark  1  4).  The 
faith  which  was  embarrassed  by  the  baptism,  but  found 
the  fact  in  the  gospel  tradition,  would  never  have  given 
it  that  decisive  significance  in  the  career  of  Jesus  which 
it  has  in  all  our  documents  unless  it  had  been  able  to 
appeal  in  doing  so  to  the  authority  of  Jesus  Himself. 
It  would  rather  have  slurred  it  over  or  ignored  it,  as 
some  suppose  the  author  of  the  fourth  gospel  has  done, 
or  it  would  have  represented  it  as  taking  place  on  account 
of  others,  not  of  Jesus  Himself.  In  our  fundamental 
source,  however,  the  second  gospel,  the  whole  story 
is  told  as  affecting  Jesus  alone.  It  is  He,  not  John 
the  Baptist,  who  sees  the  heavens  rent  and  the  dove 
descending;  and  it  is  to  Him,  not  to  John  or  the  by- 
standers, that  the  heavenly  voice  is  addressed,  Thou 
art  My  beloved  Son.  It  is  no  strained  inference,  but 
the  natural  impression  made  by  this  ancient  narrative, 
that  His  baptism  was  the  occasion  of  extraordinary  spirit- 
ual experiences  to  Jesus,  experiences  which  no  doubt  had 
something   transcendent   and    incommunicable    in   them, 

1  Weiss  inserts  Matt.  3  M  '•  in  his  restoration  of  Q,  and  argues  that  in 
this,  which  for  him  is  the  oldest  source  of  all,  a  vision  of  the  Baptist  only 
was  recorded :  it  was  John  who  saw  the  heavens  open  and  the  spirit  de- 
scend; John  to  whom  the  heavenly  voice  was  addressed  (This  is  My  Son, 
Matt.  3  l7;  not  Thou  art  my  Son,  Mark  1  ll).  He  gives  literary  expla- 
nations of  how  the  variations  which  appear  in  our  gospels  arose;  to  the 
writer  they  are  quite  unconvincing.  The  evangelists  must  have  heard 
the  story  a  thousand  times,  quite  apart  from  the  version  of  it  which  was 
under  their  eyes  as  they  wrote:  and  it  is  an  unreal  and  impossible  task  to 
explain  their  divergences  as  due  to  literary  exigencies  connected  with  the 
adjustment  of  a  text  which  has  itself  to  be  hypothetically  reconstructed. 
Die  Qaellen  der  synoptischen  Ueberlieferung,  2  f. 


II 


180  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

but  of  which  He  gave  His  disciples  such  an  idea  as  they 
could  grasp  in  the  narrative  preserved  by  the  evangelists. 

The  significant  features  in  this  narrative  are  the  descent 
of  the  Spirit  and  the  heavenly  voice.  We  do  not  ex- 
plain these  when  we  speak  of  Jesus  as  being  for  the  time 
in  an  ecstasy  or  rapture,  we  rather  indicate  the  inex- 
plicable element  in  them.  The  descent  of  the  Spirit 
signifies  that  from  this  time  forward  Jesus  was  conscious 
of  a  divine  power  in  His  life;  the  Spirit,  whatever  else 
is  involved  in  it,  always  includes  the  idea  of  power,  and 
power  in  which  God  is  active.  This  consciousness  of 
Jesus  was  attested  by  the  future  course  of  His  life.  When 
He  appeared  again  among  men,  it  was  in  the  power  of  the 
Spirit,  and  mighty  works  were  wrought  by  His  hands.  It 
is  a  mark  of  their  historicity  that  the  canonical  gospels 
have  none  of  those  puerile  miracles  of  the  infancy  by 
which  the  apocryphal  gospels  are  disgraced;  it  is  not  till 
the  man  Jesus,  in  the  maturity  of  His  manhood,  has  been 
anointed  with  the  Holy  Spirit  and  power,  that  He  begins 
to  act  in  the  character  of  the  Anointed.  But  from  this 
time  He  does  begin,  and  the  consciousness  of  divine  power 
which  must  have  attended  Him  from  the  outset  of  His 
ministry  is,  in  however  indefinite  a  form,  the  consciousness 
of  having  a  place  apart  in  the  fulfilment  of  God's  purposes, 
of  being,  in  a  word,  the  one  mightier  than  himself  for 
whom  the  Baptist  looked, 

Nothing  could  be  more  gratuitous  than  to  argue  that 
the  whole  story  of  the  Baptism  of  Jesus  is  here  trans- 
formed by  Christian  faith.  The  fact  of  the  baptism  is 
supposed,  on  this  view,  to  be  puzzling  in  itself,  and  the 
difficulty  inherent  in  it  is  got  over  by  assimilating  it  to 
the  Christian  sacrament  in  which  water  and  the  Spirit 
are  so  far  from  being  opposed  to  each  other  (as  they  are 
by  John)  that  they  normally  coincide.  It  is  literally 
preposterous  to  assume  that  Christian  baptism  set  the 


THE  BAPTISM  OF  JESUS  181 

type  for  thc<t  of  Jesus;  it  is  the  baptism  of  Jesus  which 
sets  the  type  for  the  sacrament  of  the  Church.  When 
Loisy  l  asserts  that  it  is  probable  that  tradition  at  first 
knew  nothing  but  the  simple  fact  of  the  baptism,  and 
that  the  idea  of  the  Messianic  consecration  created  the 
narrative  which  we  find  in  Mark,  it  is  perhaps  enough  to 
reply  that  we  do  not  see  the  probability.  If  Jesus  was 
conscious,  from  this  time  on,  of  a  divine  power  which 
took  possession  of  His  life  and  in  which  He  entered  on  a 
new  career  for  God,  there  is  no  reason  why  the  narrative 
should  not  have  come  from  His  lips  as  it  stands;  and  if 
He  had  no  such  consciousness — if  the  baptism  was  not 
in  some  sense  a  spiritual  birthday  for  Him — we  may  as 
well  say  at  once  that  we  know  nothing  whatever  about 
Him.  Taking  His  anointing  with  spirit  and  power,  on 
which  the  whole  life  depicted  in  the  gospels  is  dependent, 
as,  in  the  broadest  sense  which  spirit  and  power  can  bear, 
indisputable  fact,  we  must  admit  that  Jesus  stands  before 
us  from  the  very  beginning  of  our  knowledge  of  Him  as  a 
Person  uniquely  endowed,  and  probably  therefore  with  a 
consciousness  of  Himself  and  of  His  vocation  as  unique 
as  His  spiritual  power. 

This,  indeed,  is  what  is  suggested  by  the  words  of 
the  heavenly  voice.  It  has  often  been  remarked  that 
this  voice  which,  though  we  must  call  it  objective,  is 
yet  a  spiritual  and  not  a  physical  phenomenon,  utters 
itself  in  words  of  the  Old  Testament.  The  first  clause, 
'Thou  art  my  Son,'  comes  from  the  second  Psalm,  where 
it  is  addressed  by  God  to  the  ideal  King  of  Israel.  The 
second  clause,  'the  beloved,  in  whom  I  am  well  pleased,' 
goes  back  in  the  same  way  to  Isaiah  42,  and  recalls  the 
Servant  of  the  Lord  on  whom  God  puts  His  Spirit  that 
in  meekness  and  constancy  He  may  bring  forth  judgment 
to  the  nations.     It  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  this  com- 

1  Les  Evangiles  Synoptiques,  i.  107. 


182  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

bination  is  accidental,  and  it  is  quite  unnecessary  to  sup- 
pose that  it  is  the  work  of  the  apostolic  Church  looking 
back  on  the  way  in  which  Old  Testament  ideals  were 
united  in  the  life  of  Jesus.  The  ideals  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment were  far  more  vivid  to  Jesus  than  they  were  to  the 
apostolic  Church,  and  we  fail  to  do  justice  to  Jesus  unless 
we  recognise  this.  Further,  they  were  much  more  than 
ideals  to  Him;  they  were  promises  of  God  which  came 
to  have  the  virtue  of  a  call  or  vocation  for  Himself.  Often 
He  had  steeped  His  thoughts  in  them,  but  at  last,  in  this 
high  hour  of  visitation  by  the  living  God,  they  spoke 
to  Him  with  direct,  identifying,  appropriating  power. 
It  was  His  own  figure,  His  own  calling  and  destiny,  that 
rose  before  Him  in  the  ideal  King  of  the  Psalmist,  and 
the  lowly  Servant  of  the  Prophet;  it  was  His  inmost  con- 
viction and  assurance  from  this  hour  that  both  ideals 
were  to  be  fulfilled  in  Himself.  The  voice  of  God  ad- 
dressed Him  in  both  characters  at  once. 

We  do  not  need  to  define  either  ideal  more  closely, 
and  just  as  little  the  combination  of  the  two,  to  see  the 
importance  of  this.  If  the  ideal  King  of  the  Psalmist 
and  the  lowly  Servant  of  Isaiah  are  united  in  Jesus, 
then  all  the  promises  and  purposes  of  God  are  consum- 
mated in  Him  as  they  can  be  in  no  other.  This,  from 
the  first — that  is,  from  the  moment  at  which  we  are 
introduced  to  Him — is  how  He  conceives  Himself.  It 
is  in  this  conception  of  Himself  and  because  of  it  that 
He  enters  on  the  work  which  the  gospels  describe.  It 
is  this  consciousness  of  Himself  which  is  the  vindication 
of  His  whole  attitude  to  men,  and  of  the  attitude  of  His 
followers  to  Him.  It  is  no  objection  to  the  truth  of  this 
:onception  that  Jesus  did  not  begin  His  ministry  by 
announcing  it.  To  appeal  to  the  nearest  analogy,  un- 
worthy though  it  be,  who  tells  all  that  he  hopes  or  aspires 
to   at  thirty?    Yet   a  time  may  come  for  telling,   and 


THE   BAPTISM   OF   JESUS  183 

when  it  does  come  it  may  be  apparent  even  in  an  ordinary 
life  that  unavowed  convictions  had  inspired  it  all  along, 
and  that  in  these  convictions  lay  the  key  to  everything 
in  it  that  was  powerful  or  characteristic.  Others  only 
saw  afterwards,  but  He  whose  life  was  involved  could 
say  from  the  beginning,  Secretum  meurn  mihi — I  know 
myself  and  what  I  have  to  do. 

In  particular,  it  is  not  enlightening  here  to  employ 
such  technical  expressions  as  the  Messianic  consciousness 
of  Jesus,  or  to  argue  that  the  expression  'My  Son,'  as 
used  by  the  heavenly  voice,  bears  an  'official'  Messianic 
meaning.  The  ideal  King  of  the  Psalm  stands  alone: 
he  is  a  unique  figure,  with  a  unique  calling  in  relation 
to  the  Kingdom  of  God.  But  though  this  is  the  hour  at 
which  in  a  flash  of  divine  certainty  His  own  identity 
with  that  ideal  figure  takes  vivid  possession  of  the  rnind 
of  Jesus — or  might  we  not  rather  say,  because  this  is  such 
"an  hour — the  whole  associations  of  a  word  like  'official' 
are  out  of  place.  What  we  are  dealing  with  is  not  of- 
ficial, but  personal  and  vital.  The  gospels  do  not  afford 
us  the  means  of  tracing  the  antecedent  preparation  for 
this  supreme  experience  of  Jesus,  either  on  the  psycho-  ' 
logical  or  the  ethical  side;  but  it  cannot  have  been  un- 
prepared. It  was  not  to  any  person  at  random,  it  was  to 
this  Person  and  no  other,  that  the  transcendent  calling 
came;  and  it  must  be  related  in  some  way  to  what  Jesus 
was  before.  Now  the  one  thing  which  is  stamped  upon 
the  New  Testament  everywhere,  as  the  outstanding 
characteristic  of  Jesus,  is  His  filial  consciousness  in  rela- 
tion to  God.  This  was  what  no  sensitive  spiritual  ob- 
server could  miss.  It  was  so  dominant  and  omnipresent 
in  Him  that  it  constrained  Christians  to  conceive  of 
God  specifically  as  the  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 
It  is  difficult,  therefore,  to  suppose  that  Jesus  could  ever 
hear  the  words,  This  is  My  Son,  or  could  ever  repeat 


I 


184  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

them  in  teaching,  without  charging  and  suffusing  them 
with  this  filial  consciousness.  The  calling  of  the  ideal 
King,  who  is  spoken  of  by  God  as  My  Son,  is  not  to  be 
contrasted  with  this  as  official  with  personal;  rather  must 
we  suppose  that  on  the  basis  of  this  personal  relation  to 
the  Father  the  consciousness  of  that  high  calling  became 
suddenly  and  overwhelmingly  real  to  Jesus.  The  con- 
sciousness, it  might  be  put,  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God, 
as  something  realised  in  Him  as  it  was  in  no  other, 
is  the  spiritual  basis  of  all  conceptions  of  His  place, 
vocation,  and  destiny,  and  therefore  it  is  not  to  be  op- 
posed to  these  last  nor  excluded  from  them.  This  is 
the  line  also  on  which  our  minds  are  led  by  the  one 
scene  preserved  from  our  Lord's  earliest  manhood  in 
Luke  2 40  ff-  On  the  banks  of  the  Jordan  as  in  the 
courts  of  the  Temple   Jesus  was    about    His    Father's 

'  business.  His  consciousness  of  Himself,  as  determined 
by  the   heavenly  voice,  was  solitary,    incomparable,    in- 

|  communicable;  but  it  was  the  consciousness  of  one 
who  before  it  and  in  it  and  through  it  called  God 
Father;  it  was  not  official,  but  personal  and  ethical, 
filial  and  spiritual  throughout. 

It  is  only  another  way  of  saying  this  if  we  remark  that 
a  quite  unreal  importance  is  often  supposed  to  belong  to 
the  asking  and  answering  of  such  questions  as  When 
did  Jesus  first  claim  to  be  the  Messiah?  When  did 
the  consciousness  that  He  was  Messiah  awake  in  His 
own  mind?  What  modifications,  if  any,  did  He  intro- 
duce into  the  meaning  of  the  term?  All  such  questions 
exaggerate  the  official  as  opposed  to  the  personal  in  the 
life  of  Jesus,  and  in  doing  so  they  undoubtedly  mislead. 
Jesus  was  greater  than  any  name,  and  we  must  interpret 
the  names  He  uses  through  the  Person  and  His  experi- 
ences and  powers,  and  not  the  Person  through  a  formal 
definition  of  the  names.     However  such  titles  as  Messiah 


THE   BAPTISM   OF  JESUS  185 

(or  Son  of  God  as  a  synonym  of  Messiah)  may  take 
shape  as  the  investigation  goes  on,  what  we  have  to  start 
from  is  the  experience  of  an  endowment  with  divine  power, 
and  of  a  heavenly  calling  to  fulfil  the  grandest  ideals  of 
the  Old  Testament.  This  consciousness  of  divine  power 
and  of  a  unique  vocation,  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say,  lies 
bell  ind  everything  in  the  gospels.  The  words  and  deeds  of 
Jesus,  the  authority  He  wields,  the  demands  He  makes, 
His  attitude  to  men,  assume  it  at  every  point.  Whatever 
may  have  been  the  order  of  His  teaching,  whatever  the 
importance  in  His  historical  career  of  the  hour  at  which 
the  disciples  saw  into  His  secret  and  hailed  Him  as  the 
Messiah,  there  is  something  of  far  greater  consequence 
— the  fact,  namely,  that  the  life  of  Jesus,  wherever  we 
come  into  contact  with  it,  is  the  life  of  the  Person  who  is 
revealed  to  us  in  the  Baptism.  It  is  not  the  life  of  the  car- 
penter of  Nazareth,  or  of  a  Galilaean  peasant,  or  of  a  simple 
child  of  God  like  the  pious  people  in  the  first  two  chapters 
of  Luke.  It  is  the  life  of  one  who  has  been  baptized  with 
divine  power,  and  who  is  conscious  that  He  has  been  called 
by  God  with  a  calling  which  if  it  is  His  at  all  must  be  His 
alone.  It  is  this  which  makes  the  whole  gospel  picture 
of  Jesus  intelligible,  and  which  justifies  the  New  Testa- 
ment attitude  toward  Jesus  Himself.  The  attitude  is 
justified  only  if  the  picture  is  substantially  true;  and 
it  is  not  an  argument  against  the  narrative  of  the 
baptism,  but  an  argument  in  favour  of  it,  that  it 
agrees  with  the  whole  presentation  of  Jesus  in  the 
gospels,  and  with  the  Christian  recognition  of  His 
supreme  place.  It  agrees  with  them  in  the  large  sense 
that  the  subject  of  the  gospel  narrative  is  from  begin- 
ning to  end  a  person  clothed  in  divine  power  and  con- 
scious that  through  His  sovereignty  and  service  the 
Kingdom  of  God  is  to  come. 


186  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

The  Temptations 

(Mark  i  lst,  Matt.  4  '  n,  Luke  4  118) 

That  conception  of  the  consciousness  of  Jesus  with 
which  He  is  introduced  to  us  in  the  story  of  His  baptism 
is  confirmed  and  elucidated  by  the  narrative  of  the  temp- 
tation. This  was  found  in  the  source  common  to  Mat- 
thew and  Luke,  and  is  given  in  a  more  summary  form 
in  Mark.  It  is  impossible  to  say  how  Mark  comes  to 
tell  no  more  than  he  does,  or  why  Matthew  and  Luke 
have  so  much  fuller  an  account  than  he.  The  question 
is  often  discussed  as  if  the  two  versions  supplied  by  our 
gospels  were  all  that  had  to  be  considered — as  if  Mark 
must  have  abridged  the  source  common  to  Matthew  and 
Luke,  or  as  if  that  source  must  have  expanded  Mark. 
Surely  there  is  every  probability  that  the  subject  of  these 
narratives  was  one  which  would  have  a  familiar  place  in 
oral  tradition,  and  might  be  known  in  this  way  in  a  more 
condensed  or  an  ampler  form.  Why  should  not  Jesus — 
to  whom,  unless  it  is  pure  fiction,  the  narrative  must  go 
back — have  spoken  of  the  strange  experiences  which 
succeeded  His  baptism,  now  with  less  and  again  with 
greater  fulness  of  detail?  At  one  time  he  might  say  no 
more  than  we  find  in  Mark— that  the  hour  of  exaltation, 
in  which  He  saw  heaven  opened,  and  had  access  of  divine 
power,  and  heard  the  voice  of  God  call  Him  with  that 
supreme  calling,  was  followed  by  weeks  of  severe  spiri- 
tual conflict.  He  was  in  the  wilderness,  undergoing 
temptation  by  Satan;  He  was  with  the  wild  beasts,  in 
dreadful  solitude;  yet  He  was  sustained  by  heavenly 
help:  the  angels  ministered  to  Him.  At  another  time 
He  might  use  the  poetic  and  symbolic  forms  which  we 
find  in  Matthew  and  Luke,  and  which  were  no  doubt 
found  in  their  common  source,  to  give  some  idea  of  the 
nature  and  issues  of  this  spiritual  conflict.     This  not  only 


THE  TEMPTATIONS  OF  JESUS  187 

seems  to  the  writer  inherently  credible,  but  far  more  pro- 
bable than  that  the  imagination  of  the  Church,  working 
on  the  general  idea  that  Jesus  must  have  had  a  spiritual 
conflict  at  the  hour  as  which  He  entered  on  the  Messianic 
career,  constructed  out  of  His  subsequent  experience  this 
representation  of  what  it  knew  His  conflicts  to  be.  No 
doubt  the  temptations  by  which  Jesus  is  here  assailed  are 
those  by  which  He  was  assailed  throughout  His  life,  but 
that  is  only  to  say  that  they  are  real,  not  imaginary.  A 
serious  spirit  with  a  high  calling  faces  the  world  seriously, 
and  with  true  and  profound  insight.  It  looks  out  on  to 
it  as  it  is.  It  sees  the  paths  which  are  actually  open 
to  it  there,  along  which  it  may  go  if  it  will,  and  which 
often  seem  to  offer  a  seductively  short  path  to  its  goal. 
In  face  of  the  testimony  of  the  gospels  that  Jesus  did 
this,  it  is  simply  gratuitous  to  eliminate  the  temptation 
from  His  history,  and  to  explain  it  by  parallels  from  the 
mythical  history  of  Buddha,  or  as  the  reflection  of  the 
Church  upon  Jesus,  not  the  self-revelation  of  Jesus 
to  the  Church.  The  historical  character  of  the  narra- 
tive is  supported  by  what  most  will  admit  to  be  an  al- 
lusion to  it  in  an  undoubted  word  of  Jesus:  'No  one 
can  enter  into  the  house  of  the  strong  man  and  spoil  his 
goods  unless  he  first  bind  the  strong  man,  and  then  he 
will  spoil  his  house'  (Mark  3  27,  Matt.  12  29,  Luke  n  2lf). 
In  the  wilderness  Jesus  bound  the  strong  man.  He  faced 
and  vanquished  the  enemy  of  His  calling,  and  of  all  the  work 
and  will  of  God  for  man.  He  contemplated  the  false  and 
alluring  paths  which  promised  to  bear  Him  swiftly  to  the 
fulfilment  of  His  vocation,  and  in  the  strength  of  His  rela- 
tion to  God  He  turned  at  once  and  finally  from  them  all. 
A  closer  look  at  the  Temptations  throws  an  important 
light  on  Jesus'  consciousness  of  Himself.  They  are  all 
relative  to  the  character  in  which  He  is  presented  at  the 
Baptism,  that  of  the  Son  of  God,  the  ideal  King  in  and 


188  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

through  whom   God's  sovereignty  is  to  be  established. 
Jesus  is  this  ideal  King,  and  the  question  agitated  in 
the  Temptations  is  how  His  Kingship  is  to  be  realised, 
how  in  and  through  Him  the  sovereignty  of  God  is  to 
become  an  accomplished  fact  in  the  world.     Conscious 
of  His  calling,  conscious  of  the  divine  power  which  has 
come  upon  Him,   He  looks  out   upon  the  world,   and 
upon  the  ways  in  which  ascendency  over  men  may  be 
won  there.     The  first  temptation  is  concerned  with  the 
most    obvious.     Build    the    Kingdom,    it    suggests,    on 
bread.     Make  it  the  first  point  in  your  programme  to 
abolish  hunger.     Multiply  loaves  and  fishes  all  the  time. 
This,  as  we  know  from  what  followed  the  feeding  of  the 
five  thousand,  when  the  multitudes  wanted  to  take  Jesus 
by  force  and  make  Him  their  King,  was  a  way  to  ascen- 
dency   which    lay    invitingly    open.     Men    would    have 
thronged  around  Him  had  He  chosen  it,  and  the  tempta- 
tion to  do  so  lay  in  the  fact  that  He  had  the  deepest  sym- 
pathy   with    all    human    distress.     It    was    because    He 
had  compassion  on  the  multitudes  who  were  ready  to 
faint  in  the  wilderness  that  He  spread  a  table  for  them. 
But  he  knew  that  the  Kingdom  of  God  could  not  come 
by  giving  bodily  comfort  a  primacy  in  human  nature. 
He  said  to  Himself  in  the  wilderness,  as  He  said  after- 
wards to  others,  Seek  first  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  all 
these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you.     Labour  not  for 
the  meat  which  perisheth,  but  for  that  which  endureth  unto 
everlasting  life.     The  second  temptation  was  one  which 
dogged  Jesus  through  His  whole  career.     Jews  demand 
signs,  says  Paul;    and  a  ready  way  to  ascendency  over 
them  was  to  indulge  in  marvellous  displays  of  power. 
This  is  what  is  meant  by  the  temptation  of  the  pinnacle. 
'Cast  thyself  down,'  means,  'Dazzle  men's  senses,  and 
you  will  obtain  the  sovereignty  over  their  souls.'     This 
was  what  men  themselves  asserted.     'Show  us  a  sign 


THE  TEMPTATIONS  OF  JESUS  189 

from  heaven.'  'What  sign  showest  Thou  then  that  we 
may  see  and  believe?'  'Let  Him  now  come  down  from 
the  cross.'  It  is  not  easy  for  us  to  understand  a  tempta- 
tion which  was  dependent  on  the  possession  of  super- 
human power,  but  the  important  point  to  notice  is  that 
Jesus  rejected  appeals  to  the  senses  as  a  means  to  attain 
ascendency  over  men  for  God.  He  never  attempted  to 
dazzle.  He  made  no  use  of  apparatus  of  any  description. 
An  elaborate  ritual  of  worship,  awing  and  subduing  the 
senses,  would  have  seemed  to  Him,  as  a  means  of  pro- 
ducing spiritual  impressions  and  winning  men  for  God, 
a  temptation  of  the  devil.  He  aimed  at  spiritual  ends  by 
spiritual  means,  and  regarded  anything  else  as  a  betrayal 
of  His  cause.  And  finally,  as  He  looked  upon  the  world 
in  which  the  Kingdom  of  God  was  to  come,  He  saw 
another  kingdom  established  there  already  and  in  posses- 
sion of  enormous  power.  '  It  has  been  handed  over  to  Me, 
and  to  whomsoever  I  will  I  give  it.'  This  saying,  which 
in  Luke  is  put  into  the  lips  of  Satan,  is  not  meant  to  be 
regarded  as  untrue.  There  would  be  no  temptation  in 
it  if  it  was  untrue.  It  is  the  terrible  fact,  which  confronts 
every  one  who  is  interested  in  the  Kingdom  of  God, 
that  evil  in  the  world  is  enormously  strong.  It  wields 
vast  resources.  It  has  enormous  bribes  to  offer.  For 
almost  any  purpose  it  seems  able  to  put  one  into  an  ad- 
vantageous position.  At  times  it  seems  as  though  unless 
one  is  willing  to  compromise  with  it,  to  recognise  that  it 
has  at  least  a  relative  or  temporary  right  to  exist,  it  will 
be  impossible  to  get  a  foothold  in  the  world  at  all.  Now 
this  was  the  third  temptation.  Jesus  would  feel  it  the 
more  keenly  because  His  was  truly  a  kingly  nature,  born 
to  ascendency,  exercising  it  unconsciously,  and  now  called 
to  realise  the  ideal  and  promise  of  God's  King.  It  was 
urgent  that  the  power  which  was  His  of  right  should 
actually  come  into  His  hands,  and  He  would  feel  keenly 


i9o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

how  easy  the  first  steps  would  become  if  He  could  only 
make  some  kind  of  limited  and  temporary  accommoda- 
tion with  evil.  If  He  could  get  or  take  its  help  in  any 
way  it  would  do  so  much  to  clear  His  path.  But  He  was 
conscious  also  that  for  the  ideal  King,  through  whom 
the  reign  of  God  was  to  be  realised,  this  was  impossible. 
He  saw  that  to  negotiate  with  evil  was  really  to  worship 
Satan,  and  that  no  advantage  was  worth  the  price.  He 
said  to  Himself  in  this  temptation  what  He  afterwards 
said  to  all,  What  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he  gain  the  whole 
world  and  lose  himself  ? 

The  interest  of  the  Temptations,  in  connexion  with 
our  subject,  lies  in  this:  they  show  how  the  Kingdom  of 
God  is  in  the  mind  of  Jesus  essentially  bound  up  with 
Himself.  Jesus  is  often  represented  now  as  teaching  us 
things  about  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  then  assuming  an 
attitude  of  pure  passivity,  simply  waiting  on  God  to  bring 
the  Kingdom  which  no  action  of  man,  whether  His  own 
or  another's,  can  hasten  or  hinder;  but  we  see  here  that 
to  His  own  mind  the  corning  of  the  Kingdom  is  involved 
in  His  victory  over  these  temptations.  His  initial  tri- 
umph, in  principle,  over  all  the  assaults  of  Satan — His 
resolute  turning  away,  from  the  very  beginning,  from 
every  false  path — the  entrance  into  the  world  and  into 
the  life  of  man  of  a  Person  thus  victorious — are  a  revela- 
tion of  what  the  Kingdom  is,  and  a  guarantee  that  at 
whatever  cost  it  will  prevail.  This,  it  will  not  be  ques- 
tioned, is  how  Christian  faith  conceives  Jesus  all  through 
the  New  Testament;  but  it  is  of  supreme  importance  to 
notice  that  it  is  how  Jesus  conceives  Himself  from  the 
opening  of  His  career.  His  relation  to  the  Kingdom  of 
God  is  in  no  sense  accidental.  It  is  in  His  attitude  to 
the  possibilities  of  earth  that  its  true  nature  is  revealed, 
and  with  Him  it  stands  or  falls.  And  what  was  said  of 
the  baptism  may  be  repeated  here:   it  is  in  this  character 


THE   SELF-REVELATION   OF   JESUS       191 

and  in  no  other  that  Jesus  stands  behind  every  page  of 
the  gospel  history.  It  is  only  this  character  which  makes 
that  history  intelligible;  and  to  try  to  undermine  the 
narrative,  only  because  we  do  not  share  the  New  Testa- 
ment attitude  to  Jesus,  is  as  unwarranted  historically  as 
it  is  on  all  other  grounds  gratuitous. 

The  Self-Revelation  of  Jesus  in  His  Ministry 
It  has  been  remarked  already  that  no  stress  can  be 
laid  on  the  chronology  of  the  gospels,  but  if  it  is  difficult 
to  arrange  the  matter  in  order  of  time,  it  is  fatal  to  attempt 
to  systematise  it.  Of  all  books  on  the  New  Testament, 
those  which  deal  with  the  teaching  and  with  the  mind  of 
Jesus  are  the  least  interesting,  because  they  lapse  as  a 
rule  into  this  false  path.  Nothing  in  the  gospels  is 
systematic.  There  is  no  set  of  ideas  which  recurs,  as  in 
John;  no  succession  of  questions  emerges  to  be  answered 
by  the  application  of  the  same  principles,  as  in  Paul. 
Everything  is  in  a  manner  casual:  everything  is  indi- 
vidual, personal,  relative  in  some  way  to  the  moment 
and  its  circumstances,  though  it  may  enshrine  eternal 
truth.  We  may  say  of  Jesus,  with  even  less  qualifica- 
tion, what  has  been  said  of  Luther,  that  He  always  spoke 
ad  hoc  and  often  at  the  same  time  ad  hominem.  When 
words  so  spoken  are  reduced  to  a  system  the  virtue  has 
gone  out  of  them:  they  no  longer  leave  with  us  an  im- 
pression of  the  speaker.  But  an  impression  of  the  Speaker 
is  precisely  what  the  words  of  Jesus  do  leave,  and  what  we 
are  in  quest  of;  and  consequently,  at  the  risk  of  being 
tedious,  it  will  be  necessary  to  trace  the  self-revelation 
of  Jesus  as  it  is  made  from  one  situation  to  another, 
in  one  relation  or  another,  by  one  significant  utterance 
or  another,  in  the  pages  of  the  gospels.  Speaking  gen- 
erally, the  order  followed  will  be  that  in  which  the  various 
passages  of  Mark  and  Q  occur  in  Huck's  Synopse,  and 


i92  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

it  must  be  remembered  that  it  is  not  on  any  single  passage, 
but  on  the  cumulative  effect  of  the  whole,  that  the  argu- 
ment depends. 

The  summary  account  which  Mark  gives  of  the  Gali- 
lasan  ministry  (ch.  i 14f)  is  no  doubt  to  be  taken  as  a 
summary:  we  cannot  assume  that  on  any  given  occasion 
Jesus  used  these  very  words.  But  there  is  no  reason 
to  doubt  that  they  are  a  true  summary,  and  truly  repre- 
sent the  mind  and  the  message  of  Jesus.  With  His 
appearance  'the  time  was  fulfilled':  the  great  crisis 
had  come  in  God's  dealings  with  men.  It  is  probably  a 
mistake  to  say  that  the  apocalyptic  idea  of  a  predestined 
course  of  events  underlies  this:  the  apocalyptic  way  of 
calculating  times  and  seasons  was  foreign  to  the  temper 
of  Jesus,  and  He  repeatedly  disclaims  it  (Matt.  24 36; 
Acts  1  7).  But  if  anything  can  be  depended  upon  in  the 
gospels,  it  is  that  He  had  the  sense  of  living  in  a  crisis 
of  final  importance:  history  up  to  this  point  had  been, 
so  to  speak,  preparatory  and  preliminary,  but  now  the 
decisive  hour  had  come.  It  was  a  gracious  hour,  and 
the  announcement  of  what  was  impending  was  'the 
gospel  of  God';  but  it  was  an  hour  in  which  the  true 
decision  was  a  matter  of  life  and  death,  and  we  shall  see 
as  we  proceed  how  that  decision  turned  upon  a  relation 
to  Jesus  Himself.  The  evangelist  strikes  the  true  key 
to  the  consciousness  and  the  self-revelation  of  Jesus, 
when  he  speaks  of  the  fulness  of  the  time  and  represents 
Him  as  saying,  The  Kingdom  of  God  has  drawn  near; 
repent  and  believe  in  the  gospel. 

Jesus  and  the  Twelve:    The  Conditions  of  Dis- 
cipleship 

(Mark  3  13"19 ;  Matt.  10,  and  parallels  in  Luke) 

The  first  incident  recorded  by  Mark  is  the  calling  of 
two  pairs  of  brothers,  Simon  and  Andrew,   James  and 


THE  CONDITIONS  OF   DISCIPLESHIP    193 

John,  to  a  closer  relation  of  discipleship.  This  is  guar- 
anteed by  the  inimitable  word,  Follow  Me,  and  I  will 
make  you  fishers  of  men.  This  was  His  own  task,  to 
win  and  gather  men  for  the  Kingdom,  and  they  were 
to  help  Him.  The  ascendency  which  He  exercised  in 
thus  drawing  men  away  from  their  worldly  callings  and 
hopes  into  association  with  Himself  is  quite  indefinite, 
and  even  in  yielding  to  it  the  four  first  disciples  could 
have  no  distinct  idea  of  what  it  involved.  But  they  did 
yield.  They  left  their  nets  and  followed  Him,  and  as 
they  lived  in  His  company,  heard  His  words,  saw  His 
character  and  His  works,  the  sense  deepened  in  their 
hearts  of  His  right  to  command.  It  is  not,  however, 
until  the  circle  is  enlarged  by  the  appointment  of  the 
Twelve,  and  by  Jesus'  commission  and  instructions  to 
them,  that  a  vivid  light  is  cast  for  us  on  Jesus'  conscious- 
ness of  Himself.  Wellhausen  has  recently  attacked  the 
whole  narrative  of  Mark  at  this  point.1  The  giving  of 
bynames,  like  Cephas  and  Boanerges,  he  argues,  is  not  a 
historical  act;  in  short,  we  have  no  historical  act  at  all 
in  Mark  3  13~19;  it  is  rather  a  set  of  statistics,  presented  as 
history — an  index,  in  the  form  of  a  scene  upon  a  lofty  stage. 
Similarly,  of  Mark  6  7"13,  which  narrates  the  sending  out 
of  the  Twelve  in  pairs,  he  says  that  it  contains  no  his- 
torical tradition.  The  passage  has  great  value  as  show- 
ing us  the  way  in  which  the  earliest  Christian  mission 
was  carried  on  in  Palestine,  but  it  is  of  no  value  for  the 
life  of  Jesus.  Both  Mark  3  1319  and  Mark  6 713  are 
editorial  sections  in  the  gospel;  they  reveal  something 
of  the  author  but  nothing  of  the  subject. 

It  is  not  easy  to  take  this  seriously.  The  Twelve 
are  not  to  be  eliminated  from  the  history  of  Jesus  by  any 
such  flimsy  devices.  There  is  far  earlier  evidence  for 
their  peculiar  standing  in  the  Church  than  that  of  Mark. 

1  Das  Evangelium  Marci,  24  ff.,  45  f. 


i94  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

In  i  Cor.  1 5  5  Paul  mentions  an  appearing  of  Jesus  to  the 
Twelve.  This  is  part  of  the  tradition  of  the  Jerusalem 
Church  about  the  Risen  Saviour  which  Paul  learned 
when  he  returned  to  Jerusalem  from  Damascus  within  a 
few  years  of  the  resurrection.  The  Twelve  had  not 
arisen  spontaneously  and  assumed  the  importance  which 
Paul's  language  implies.  They  are  mentioned  frequently 
in  Mark,  quite  apart  from  their  formal  appointment  and 
mission  (4  10,  9  35,  10  32,  11  u,  14  10, 17' 20, 43),  and  they  were 
known  to  the  other  early  source  used  by  Matthew  and 
Luke  (Matt.  19 28,  Luke  22 30).  Presumably  not  even 
Wellhausen  intends  to  deny  that  Jesus  surnamed  Simon 
Cephas,  and  that  He  called  the  sons  of  Zebedee  'our 
sons  of  thunder.'  This  last  particular,  which  is  pre- 
served by  Mark  alone  (3  17),  is  usually  and  properly 
regarded  as  a  proof  of  close  connexion  between  the 
writer  and  the  apostolic  circle.  But  if  Jesus  gave  these 
names,  what  is  gained  by  saying  that  the  giving  of  by- 
names is  not  an  historical  act?  The  evangelist  probably 
does  not  mean  us  to  understand  that  Jesus  gave  them 
as  part  of  the  formal  act  by  which  He  'made'  the  Twelve; 
but  as  He  writes  out  the  list  of  the  Twelve,  it  comes 
quite  naturally  to  Him  to  mention  these  surnames  of 
promise  or  rebuke.  They  may  have  been  first  bestowed 
on  other  occasions — Cephas,  for  example,  at  Matt.  16  18, 
Boanerges  perhaps  at  Luke  9 54  f-;  but  to  appeal  to  them 
to  discredit  the  appointment  of  the  Twelve  is  beside 
the  mark.  There  is  as  little  ground  for  Wellhausen's 
attack  on  their  mission.  He  does  not  believe  it  to  be 
historical,  because  though  the  experiment  is  successful 
it  is  not  repeated,  and  the  Twelve  are  for  the  future  as 
passive  and  as  wanting  in  independence  as  before.  We 
have  no  such  knowledge  of  the  circumstances  as  enables 
us  to  say  that  this  experiment  if  successful  must  have 
been  repeated.     The  fact  that  a  thing  is  not  done  twice 


THE   CONDITIONS   OF   DISCIPLESHIP    i 


95 


is  not  a  proof  that  it  was  not  done  once.  When  the  Twelve 
returned  from  their  experimental  mission,  a  crisis  was  at 
hand  in  the  ministry  of  Jesus;  and  from  that  time  He 
kept  them  closely  by  Him,  and  devoted  Himself  almost 
exclusively  to  preparing  them  for  the  dark  future  which 
was  now  impending. 

The  calling  of  the  Twelve,  then,  being  indisputably 
historical,  what  is  its  significance?  It  has  no  doubt  a 
reference  of  some  kind  to  Israel,  the  people  of  God.  It 
hardly  matters,  for  our  purpose,  whether  we  think  that 
Jesus  had  in  view  the  ancient  Israel,  and  expected  the 
Kingdom  of  God  to  be  realised  under  its  ancient  organisa- 
tion; or  whether  when  He  spoke  of  the  Twelve  sitting  on 
thrones  and  judging  (that  is,  ruling)  the  twelve  tribes  of 
Israel,  He  was  quite  consciously  using  imaginative  or 
poetic  language,  and  had  in  view  a  new  people  of  God 
in  which  the  ideal  of  the  old  should  be  fulfilled.  In 
either  case,  when  He  chose  the  Twelve,  the  new  Israel 
of  God  was  before  His  mind  as  something  to  be  consti- 
tuted round  them,  and  as  something,  at  the  same  time, 
in  which  His  own  place  would  be  supreme.  He  saw 
in  His  mind's  eye,  as  they  gathered  about  Him,  what 
John  saw  in  the  apocalypse — the  wall  of  the  city  having 
twelve  foundations,  and  on  them  twelve  names  of  the 
twelve  apostles  of  the  Lamb.  Separated  from  every- 
thing else  that  is  known  of  Jesus — separated,  for  ex- 
ample, from  what  we  are  told  of  His  baptism,  and  from 
what  we  shall  see  in  more  articulate  form  later — this 
may  seem  fanaticism  if  ascribed  to  Jesus  Himself,  and 
extravagance  in  an  interpreter  of  the  gospels;  but  taken 
in  its  actual  historical  relations,  as  the  gospels  supply 
them,  the  writer  regards  it  as  simple  truth.  But  what  a 
revelation  of  the  mind  of  Jesus  it  gives!  He  does  not 
call  Himself  Messiah,  or  Son  of  God,  or  any  other  lofty 
name;    but  He  acts,   unassumingly  so  far  as  the  out- 


196  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

ward  form  goes,  yet  in  a  way  which  indicates  His  con- 
viction that  the  fulfilment  of  all  God's  purposes — for 
nothing  less  is  involved  in  the  re-constitution  of  God's 
people — is  to  come  through  Him. 

When  Jesus  sent  out  the  Twelve  on  the  preliminary 
or  experimental  mission  to  which  reference  has  been 
made,  He  gave  them  a  charge  or  commission.  This  is 
summarised  in  Mark  6  7"n,  but  what  corresponds  to  it  in 
Matthew  fills  the  whole  of  a  long  chapter  (ch.  10).  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  this  chapter,  like  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount,  is  a  composition  of  the  evangelist;  he  has 
gathered  into  it  for  catechetical  or  other  practical  reasons 
all  the  words  of  Jesus  to  His  disciples  which  have  any 
bearing  on  their  work  as  missionaries.  Some  of  these 
words  are  relevant  to  the  historical  occasion  on  which 
Matthew  represents  them  as  spoken;  others  are  only 
relevant  if  the  outlook  of  the  speaker  is  conceived  to  be 
not  on  the  Jewish  world  immediately  around  him,  the 
Galilaean  cities  and  villages  where  he  was  usually  so 
welcome,  but  on  the  Jewish  world  as  it  was  after  His 
death,  that  Judaean  environment  which  in  its  representa- 
tives was  so  hostile  to  the  disciples,  or  even  on  the  wider 
Gentile  world  beyond.  It  does  not  follow,  however, 
that  the  words  put  into  the  lips  of  Jesus  in  Matthew  10 
are  not  genuine,  or  that  they  misrepresent  His  conscious- 
ness of  Himself.  To  a  certain  extent  they  have  parallels 
in  the  eschatological  discourse  in  Mark  (Matt.  10 17"22 
being  parallel  to  Mark  13  9"13),  and  to  a  much  larger 
extent  in  Luke.  In  Luke,  indeed,  there  is  a  peculiarity 
that  we  have  two  missionary  or  apostolic  charges  of 
Jesus,  one  to  the  Twelve  (Luke  9  1  ff-),  and  another  to  the 
Seventy  (Luke  iolff).  It  is  not  necessary  here  to  con- 
sider whether  the  mission  of  the  Seventy  has  any  his- 
torical character,  or  whether  it  is  simply  invented  or 
assumed  by  the  evangelist  as  a  counterpart  to  that  of 


THE  CONDITIONS   OF   DISCIPLESHIP    197 

the  Twelve,  a  means  of  justifying,  by  appeal  to  Jesus, 
the  Gentile  as  well  as  the  Jewish  mission.  Even  if  this 
idea  were  in  the  evangelist's  mind  he  has  made  no  applica- 
tion of  it.  The  words  of  Jesus  which  he  gives,  whether 
addressed  to  the  Twelve  or  the  Seventy,  are  substan- 
tially those  which  we  find  in  Matthew  addressed  to  the 
Twelve  alone;  and  the  Seventy  in  point  of  fact  never 
approach  Gentiles.  They  prepare  the  way  of  the  Lord 
in  Palestine.  Considering  how  little  we  know  of  the 
methods  of  Jesus,  it  is  probably  rash  to  say  that  the 
mission  of  this  larger  number  of  disciples  only  embodies 
a  thought  of  Luke,  and  not  a  historical  fact. 

The  first  point  in  which  the  evangelists  are  agreed  is 
that  Jesus  in  sending  out  His  disciples  imparted  to  them 
power  over  evil  spirits.  The  importance  which  this 
power  had  in  His  own  mind  will  appear  later.  What  is 
to  be  observed  here  is  that  we  see  already  Him  who  had 
been  baptized  with  the  Holy  Spirit  and  power  baptizing 
His  followers  with  the  same.  It  was  a  primary  experi- 
ence of  the  Twelve  that  they  owed  to  Jesus  such  a  re- 
inforcement of  their  spiritual  resources  as  enabled  them 
to  vanquish  the  most  hideous  manifestations  of  demonic 
power  and  malignity.  They  could  heal  those  who  were 
under  the  tyranny  of  the  devil  because  He  had  sent  and 
empowered  them.  It  does  not  matter  what  theory  we  hold 
of  demonic  possession  and  its  cure — whether  we  believe, 
as  every  one  believed  then,  in  bad  spirits  which  invaded 
and  victimised  wretched  men;  or  in  mental  and  perhaps 
moral  disorders  ranging  from  hysteria  to  the  wildest 
forms  of  madness — some  experience  of  the  disciples  lies 
behind  the  words,  He  gave  them  authority  over  the 
unclean  spirits.  They  could  do  what  they  could  not  do 
before  because  He  enabled  them  to  do  it,  and  the  sense 
of  this  is  a  rudimentary  form  of  the  specifically  Christian 
consciousness.     The  greatness  of  Jesus  would  grow  upon 


i98  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

them  in  a  thousand  ways,  but  this  was  one  of  the  experi- 
ences in  which  it  was  signally  if  mysteriously  made  real. 
The  power  over  unclean  spirits  belongs  to  the  gracious 
side  of  the  commission,  but  what  strikes  one  most  in  the 
brief  report  of  Mark  (611),  with  its  parallels  in  Matthew 
(io14)  and  Luke  (9  s),  is  the  severity  with  which  Jesus 
speaks.  He  lives  in  the  sense  of  the  absolute  signifi- 
cance of  His  message.  It  is  not  something  on  which  He 
proposes  to  negotiate  with  men— a  matter  in  regard  to 
which  there  is  room  for  reflection  and  for  arranging 
terms.  It  is  in  the  highest  degree  urgent,  and  it  is  a 
matter  of  life  and  death.  '  Into  whatsoever  city  ye  enter 
and  they  receive  you  not,  go  out  into  the  streets  and 
say,  Even  the  dust  that  cleaves  to  us  from  your  city  on 
our  feet  we  wipe  off  against  you.  Verily  I  say  unto  you, 
it  shall  be  more  tolerable  for  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  in 
the  day  of  judgment  than  for  that  city.'  There  is  no- 
thing, it  may  be  said,  personal  in  this:  nothing  that 
tends  to  put  Jesus  into  a  place  apart.  Religion,  as 
philosophers  tell  us,  is  always  a  form  of  the  absolute 
consciousness;  and  in  presenting  His  message  in  this 
absolute  and  uncompromising  tone  Jesus  only  exhibits 
Himself  as  a  supremely  religious  spirit.  Even  if  we 
could  insulate  the  words  just  cited  it  might  be  doubted 
whether  this  interpretation  did  justice  to  them;  but 
when  we  take  them  in  connexion  with  all  that  has  pre- 
ceded—with the  consciousness  with  which  Jesus  entered 
on  His  work,  as  revealed  in  the  narratives  of  the  Bap- 
tism and  Temptation,  and  with  His  communication  to 
the  disciples  of  His  own  power  to  cast  out  evil  spirits, 
and  so  to  give  a  kind  of  sacramental  pledge  that  the 
Kingdom  of  God  had  drawn  near— it  is  certain  that  it 
does  not  do  them  justice.  Jesus  counted  for  more  than 
a  voice  in  the  preaching  of  the  Kingdom,  and  though 
the  Twelve  might  have  been  puzzled  at  the  time  to  say 


THE  CONDITIONS   OF   DISCIPLESHIP    199 

for  what  more,  they  must  have  felt  the  quick  of  the  matter 
touched  when  He  said,  Behold,  it  is  I  who  send  you 
forth  as  sheep  in  the  midst  of  wolves  (Matt.  10  16).  There 
was  a  sense  in  which  He  could  call  the  cause  of  God  His 
cause,  as  not  even  the  most  devoted  of  prophets  could  do; 
He  was  identified  with  it  and  it  with  Him  in  a  way  to  which 
the  past  afforded  no  parallel;  and  as  this  sunk  ever  deeper 
and  deeper  into  the  minds  of  His  followers  they  grew  un- 
consciously to  a  more  adequate — let  us  say,  a  more  Chris- 
tian— view  of  what  their  Master  was,  and  of  what  ought 
to  be  their  own  attitude  to  Him. 

The  second  part  of  the  charge  to  the  Twelve  in  Mat- 
thew (chapter  10  l7  ff)  has  parallels  chiefly  in  the  twelfth 
and  fourteenth  chapters  of  Luke.  The  situation  which 
it  contemplates  is  in  the  main  that  of  the  followers  of  Jesus 
in  Palestine  in  the  generation  after  His  death.  The  various 
sayings  of  which  it  is  composed  are  addressed,  perhaps, 
rather  to  disciples  in  general  than  to  the  apostles;  but 
they  have  a  special  application  to  those  who  led  the  new 
community  and  represented  it  before  men.  What  we 
have  to  remember  in  reading  it  is  that  it  was  not  spoken  at 
one  time,  and  certainly  not  on  the  one  occasion  when 
Jesus  sent  out  the  Twelve  two  and  two;  but  it  is  a  quite 
gratuitous  supposition  that  the  mind  which  it  expresses 
is  not  the  mind  of  Jesus,  or  that  the  words  in  which  it  is 
conveyed  are  not  substantially  His  words.  Some  of  them, 
as  has  already  been  pointed  out,  have  parallels  in  the  es- 
chatological  discourse  in  Mark  13;  and  it  seems  to  the 
writer  incredible  that  Jesus  should  have  left  His  cause  and 
His  followers  in  the  world  without  a  word  to  guide  or 
brace  them  for  the  perilous  future.  He  cannot  but  have 
looked  forward  to  the  task  and  the  trials  which  awaited 
them,  and  the  fact  that  much  of  what  is  recorded  in  this 
chapter  has  this  task  and  these  trials  in  view  is  no  proof 
that  the  words  are  not  His.     It  only  shows  that  when  the 


200  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

time  came  He  felt  and  spoke  as  the  call  of  the  time  re- 
quired. 

The  very  first  words  in  Matthew  (10  17  f)  bring  us  to 
the  heart  of  our  subject.  'Beware  of  men.  For  they 
will  hand  you  over  to  councils,  and  in  their  synagogues 
they  shall  scourge  you.  And  ye  shall  be  brought  be- 
fore governors  and  kings,  too,  on  My  account  (Zvexev 
tfioo),  for  a  testimony  to  them  and  to  the  gentiles.'  The 
words  'on  My  account'  make  it  clear  that  in  the  mind  of 
the  writer  at  least  the  work  of  the  disciples  was  somehow 
identified  with  Jesus.  In  all  their  preaching  and  heal- 
ing they  must  have  referred  to  Him;  the  cause  which 
they  represented  stood  or  fell  with  their  relation  to  Him; 
it  was  for  His  sake  that  they  themselves  were  identified 
with  the  cause.  This,  no  doubt,  is  the  truth.  It  answers 
to  everything  we  know  of  the  attitude  of  the  earliest  Chris- 
tians to  Jesus  and  the  gospel.  But  it  has  been  questioned 
whether  the  words  ivexev  ifiod,  though  they  truly  rep- 
resent the  attitude  of  the  first  disciples,  as  truly  represent 
the  consciousness  or  the  claim  of  Jesus.  They  occur 
again  in  ver.  39,  and  Harnack  omits  them  there  because 
they  are  wanting  in  the  parallel  in  Luke  (ly33).1  Here 
Luke  has  no  independent  parallel,  but  a  parallel  is  found 
in  Mark  13  9  and  (probably  in  dependence  on  Mark)  in 
Luke  21  12.  The  passage  in  Mark  occurs  in  the  eschato- 
logical  discourse,  but  not  in  the  little  (Jewish  ?)  apocalypse 
which  many  recognise  as  embedded  in  that  discourse; 
on  the  contrary,  it  is  generally  admitted  to  be  part  of 
the  oldest  tradition  concerning  Jesus.  But  it  also  con- 
tains hexev  kfioo,  which  is  varied  in  Luke  into  hsxtv  rod 
dvdfiard?  /xou,  for  My  name's  sake.  All  three  evangel- 
ists, it  may  be  remarked,  at  the  close  of  this  paragraph 
in  the  eschatological  discourse,  unite  in  the  synonymous 
expression   did   zd   ovo/xd   fiou    (Matt.    24 9,    Mark    13 13, 

1  Spriiche  und  Reden  Jesu,  63. 


THE  CONDITIONS   OF   DISCIPLESHIP    201 

Luke  21  17).  This  alone  would  make  us  hesitate  to 
question  the  words  'for  My  sake'  in  Matt.  10  18;  but  we 
hesitate  all  the  more,  indeed  we  feel  that  all  ground  for 
suspense  is  taken  away,  when  we  notice  that  Jesus  in  this 
very  chapter  says  the  same  thing  over  and  over,  both  ex- 
plicitly and  implicitly,  in  terms  which  no  one  ventures  to 
doubt.  Thus  in  ver.  32  f.:  'Every  one  therefore  who 
shall  confess  Me  before  men,  him  will  I  also  confess 
before  My  Father  in  heaven.  But  whosoever  shall  deny 
Me  before  men,  him  will  I  also  deny  before  My  Father 
in  heaven.'  The  parallel  here  between  Matthew  and 
Luke  is  exceedingly  close,  the  use  of  the  Semitic  idiom 
6ftoXoyelv  iv  in  both  evangelists  being  among  the  clearest 
evidences  of  the  essentially  identical  translations  which 
they  employed  of  the  Aramaic  sayings  of  Jesus.1  But 
if  Jesus  really  used  these  words  about  confessing  and  deny- 
ing Him  before  men,  and  about  being  confessed  and 
denied  accordingly  by  Him  before  God,  why  should  He 
not  have  said,  Ye  shall  be  brought  before  governors  and 
kings  for  My  sake  ?  It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the 
solemnity  of  the  utterance  in  Matt.  10  32f-,  or  the  greatness 
of  the  claim  which  it  makes.  It  says  as  clearly  as  lan- 
guage can  say  it  that  fidelity  to  Jesus  is  that  on  which  the 
final  destiny  of  man  depends.  It  is  the  testimony  of 
Jesus  to  men  on  which  at  last  they  stand  or  fall  before 
God,  and  this  testimony  is  concentrated  on  the  question 
whether  or  not  they  have  been  loyal  to  Him.  One  in- 
dubitable word  like  this  lights  up  for  us  much  which 
might  have  remained  obscure,  and  raises  into  full  assur- 
ance much  which  might  have  left  room  for  question. 
The  mind  out  of  which  it  sprung  can  only  be  the  mind 
of  one  who  is  conscious  that  He  is  related  as  no  other  can 
be  to  the  purposes  of  God  and  to  the  life  of  men;  conscious, 
to  express   it  otherwise,   that  the  place   in  which   New 

1  J.  H.  Moulton,  Grammar  of  New  Testament  Greek,  104. 


202  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

Testament  faith  sets  its  Lord  is  the  place  due  to  Himself. 
It  has  often  been  pointed  out  that  Jesus  does  not  here  rep- 
resent Himself  as  the  final  Judge  by  whose  verdict  man's 
destiny  is  decided,  but  only  as  the  great  Witness  by  whose 
testimony  the  verdict  is  determined.  But  it  does  not 
matter  whether  we  call  Him  judge  or  witness.  The 
real  point  is  that  what  He  speaks  of  as  having  absolute 
significance  in  the  final  judgment  is  the  attitude  of  men 
to  Himself  as  faithful  or  unfaithful.  It  is  on  this  that 
everything  depends;  and  if  we  bear  on  our  minds  a  true 
impression  of  this  tremendous  saying,  and  admit  that  it 
reflects  the  mind  of  Christ  about  Himself  and  His  rela- 
tion to  God  and  men,  we  shall  be  slow  to  question  the 
place  which  He  holds  in  all  New  Testament  faith. 

vSo  much  of  the  scepticism  about  the  'Christian'  ele- 
ments in  the  gospel — so  much  of  the  disposition  to  ascribe 
them  to  the  faith  of  the  Church  in  the  Risen  Lord  instead 
of  to  the  historical  Jesus — rests  upon  the  failure  to  ap- 
preciate words  like  this,  that  it  is  worth  while  to  insist 
both  on  their  genuineness  and  their  meaning.  They  are 
not  only  found  both  in  Matthew  and  in  Luke,  but,  as  has 
just  been  observed,  they  are  found  in  both  with  a  pecu- 
liarity of  expression  (6/j.oXoyeTv  &)  which  shows  that  the 
evangelists  used  the  same  translation  of  an  Aramaic 
source.  The  saying  therefore  was  current  and  on  record, 
in  the  language  in  which  Jesus  spoke,  before  it  was  taken 
into  our  gospels.  The  fact  that  Luke  speaks  of  Jesus 
confessing  or  denying  men  'before  the  angels  of  God/ 
while  Matthew  has  '  before  My  Father  in  heaven,'  may  not 
require  any  particular  explanation:  Luke  may  have 
unconsciously  conceived  the  scenery  of  the  final  judg- 
ment more  picturesquely  than  Matthew.  But  it  is  prob- 
able that  this  variation,  as  well  as  Luke's  use  of  'the 
Son  of  Man'  (in  ch.  12  8)  where  Matthew  has  'I,'  are 
rather  to  be  explained  by  reference  to  a  similar  passage 


THE  CONDITIONS   OF  DISCIPLESHIP    203 

found  in  all  the  evangelists  (Mark  8 38,  Matt.  16  27,  Luke 
9 26).  There  the  angels  and  the  Son  of  Man  are  combined 
in  the  picture  of  the  judgment,  and  the  familiarity  of  that 
solemn  scene  would  involuntarily  occasion  such  remi- 
niscences of  it  as  can  here  be  traced  in  Luke.  The  free- 
dom with  which  the  essential  import  of  the  words  of 
Jesus  is  given  only  sets  that  import  in  relief.  In  words 
which  circulated  in  the  Church  from  the  beginning  He 
proclaimed  the  absolute  significance  of  His  own  person, 
and  identified  loyalty  to  Himself  with  loyalty  to  God  and 
His  cause.  One  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  fourth  gospel 
on  the  ground  of  which  its  historical  character  has  been 
depreciated  is  that  it  is  perpetually  emphasising  this 
absolute  significance  of  Jesus  in  abstract  forms.  It 
represents  Jesus  saying  of  Himself  I  am,  ly&  £<>,  with- 
out any  predicate,  as  if  the  evangelist  in  his  sense  of 
Jesus'  greatness  had  become  inarticulate.  It  is  as  though 
he  had  something  to  say  about  his  Lord — or  rather  as 
though  Jesus  had  something  to  say  about  Himself— 
to  which  no  human  language  was  equal;  the  absolute 
unqualified  'I  am'  (John  824'28:  also  ver.  58)?  means 
that  no  words  can  exhaust  His  significance;  He  is  the 
all-decisive  personality  on  relation  to  whom  everything 
turns.  It  cannot  be  questioned  that  the  fourth  gospel 
is  written  in  the  language  of  the  evangelist  rather  than  in 
that  of  Jesus:  but  is  there  anything  in  its  boldest  asser- 
tions of  the  absolute  significance  of  Jesus  which  tran- 
scends this  thoroughly  attested  word  in  Matt.  10  32  ?  The 
writer  is  unable  to  see  it.  The  attitude  to  Himself  on 
the  part  of  men  which  is  here  explicitly  claimed  by  Jesus 
—the  absolute  loyalty  which  involves  an  absolute  trust 
— it  is  literally  impossible  to  transcend.  It  is  not  only 
in  Christian  faith,  as  we  find  it  expressed  in  the  apostolic 
epistles,  but  in  the  consciousness  of  Jesus,  that  this 
religious  relation  of  men  to  Him  is  rooted.     It  is  not  only 


2o4  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

that  they  identify  themselves  with  Him  in  a  fidelity  in- 
distinguishable from  that  which  is  due  to  God  alone,  but 
that  He,  in  the  most  solemn,  explicit,  and  overpowering 
words,  requires  from  them  that  identification,  and  makes 
their  eternal  destiny  depend  upon  it. 

This  is  the  more  remarkable  when  we  consider  the 
condition  under  which  this  loyalty  to  Jesus  has  to  be 
displayed.  It  may  require,  He  tells  His  followers,  the 
sacrifice  of  the  tenderest  natural  affection.  The  connex- 
ion between  Matt.  10 33  and  Matt.  10 34  may  be  due 
to  the  evangelist — the  parallels  are  not  connected  in  Luke 
— but  even  if  it  is,  it  answers  to  the  truth.  When  Jesus 
claimed  confession,  He  thought  of  what  would  make 
it  hard;  and  whether  He  spoke  of  this  at  the  moment 
or  not,  He  did  speak  of  it,  and  Matthew  appropriately 
introduces  His  words  here.  The  parallel  in  Luke  is  not 
close,  so  much  so  that  Harnack  doubts  whether  the  com- 
mon source  on  which  the  evangelists  so  largely  depend 
does  lie  behind  them  at  this  point.  Even  if  it  does  not, 
he  holds  that  in  the  last  resort  some  common  source  is 
implied;  and  we  may  fairly  say  that  whether  or  not  we 
are  dealing  with  the  very  words  of  Jesus,  we  are  in  con- 
tact with  His  mind.  Matthew's  report  is  the  simplest. 
'Think  not  that  I  came  to  send  peace  on  the  earth:  I 
came  not  to  send  peace,  but  a  sword.  For  I  came  to  set 
a  man  at  variance  against  his  father,  and  the  daughter 
against  her  mother,  and  the  daughter-in-law  against  her 
mother-in-law:  and  a  man's  foes  shall  be  they  of  his 
own  household.  He  that  loveth  father  or  mother  more 
than  Me  is  not  worthy  of  Me;  and  he  that  loveth  son  or 
daughter  more  than  Me  is  not  worthy  of  Me.'  Perhaps 
the  key  to  this  passage  is  to  be  found  in  the  consideration 
that  Jesus  speaks  in  it  out  of  His  own  experience.  Fidelity 
to  God  on  His  part  introduced  misunderstanding  and 
division  into  the  home  at  Nazareth.     His  mother  could 


THE  CONDITIONS   OF  DISCIPLESHIP    205 

not  comprehend  Him.  His  brothers  did  not  believe  in 
Him.  We  can  see  from  the  incident  preserved  in  Mark 
3  20  f ,  31  ff •,  and  Matt.  12  46  ff-,  what  painful  tension  resulted 
in  the  family  relations.  Jesus  must  have  loved  His 
mother  and  His  brothers  with  a  natural  affection  as  pure 
and  strong  as  His  nature;  can  we  estimate  the  pain  it 
cost  Him  to  recognise  that  their  influence  over  Him  was 
deliberately  exerted  to  obstruct  or  frustrate  His  work? 
If  the  sword  of  which  Simeon  prophesied  pierced  the  heart 
of  Mary  as  she  heard  her  Son  say,  Who  is  My  mother 
and  who  are  My  brothers? — ruling  her  and  them  alike 
out  of  His  life  as  unable  to  understand  and  not  entitled  to 
interfere — did  it  not  pierce  His  own  heart  also  ?  He  knew 
in  experience  the  pang  it  cost  to  be  thus  cruel  to  what 
was  after  all  a  genuine  natural  affection;  but,  though 
He  felt  the  pain  more  keenly  than  those  on  whom  it 
was  inflicted,  His  calling  demanded  that  He  should  be 
thus  cruel;  and  the  law  under  which  He  Himself  lived 
was  that  to  which  He  called  all  His  followers. 

Only,  there  is  one  significant  difference.  What  He 
does  for  the  sake  of  His  calling,  He  requires  them  to  do 
for  His  sake.  The  consciousness  of  His  unique  signifi- 
cance, of  the  solitary  and  peculiar  place  which  He  holds 
in  the  working  out  of  the  purposes  of  God,  is  always 
apparent  when  He  speaks  of  His  having  come  for  this 
or  that  end.  It  is  so,  for  example,  in  Matt.  5  17  (I  came 
not  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil) ,  or  in  Matt.  9  13  (/  came  not 
to  call  the  righteous  but  sinners),  or  in  Luke  19  10  {The 
Son  of  Man  came  to  seek  and  to  save  that  which  was 
lost);  it  is  so  here  when  He  says,  /  came  not  to  bring 
peace  but  a  sword.  Jesus  is  thinking  and  speaking 
deliberately  about  Himself  and  His  work  in  the  world, 
and  in  what  amazing  words  He  speaks!  He  contem- 
plates the  agonising  disruption  of  families  which  will  take 
place  according  as  He  is  or  is  not  accepted  by  the  mem- 


206  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

bers  of  them,  and  He  says  deliberately  that  the  dearest 
and  most  intimate  bond  is  to  be  broken  rather  than  the 
bond  of  fidelity  to  Him.  Whom  does  the  man  make 
Himself,  what  place  does  He  venture  to  claim  in  the 
relations  of  God  and  human  beings,  who  with  clear 
consciousness  says — He  that  loveth  father  or  mother 
more  than  Me  is  not  worthy  of  Me,  and  he  that  loveth 
son  or  daughter  more  than  Me  is  not  worthy  of  Me? 
This  is  personal,  concrete  language,  asserting  an  im- 
mediate relation  of  the  Speaker  and  of  all  who  hear 
Him;  but  it  is  for  this  very  reason  far  more  wonderful 
than  any  formal  assumption  of  a  title  or  a  dignity  could 
be.  It  makes  a  far  deeper  impression  on  us,  if  it  makes 
any  impression  at  all,  than  if  Jesus  had  claimed  in  set 
terms  to  be  the  Messiah  or  the  Son  of  God  or  the  Son 
of  Man.  There  is  something  in  it  which  for  boldness 
transcends  all  that  such  titles  suggest.  It  involves  the 
exercise  of  whatever  authority  we  can  conceive  them  to 
confer:  it  exhibits  Jesus  acting  as  one  too  great  for  any 
title  to  describe — as  one  with  right  to  a  name  which  is 
above  every  name.  It  is  thoroughly  in  harmony  with 
the  utterance  already  considered  about  confessing  and 
denying  Him;  and  all  the  more  if  it  were  spoken  in 
another  context  does  it  justify  us  in  believing  that, 
wonderful  and  almost  incredible  as  it  is,  it  is  a  vital 
part  of  the  self-revelation  of  Jesus.  We  repeat  that 
there  is  nothing  in  the  New  Testament,  not  even 
in  Paul  or  John,  which  goes  beyond  it;  and  it  will 
be  admitted,  unless  we  wantonly  deny  that  it  is  from 
the  lips  of  Jesus,  that  that  is  no  true  Christianity  which 
comes  short  of  it. 

Much  interest  has  gathered  round  the  passage  in  Luke 
which  is  usually  and  no  doubt  rightly  regarded  as  parallel 
to  this,  because  of  its  use  of  the  extraordinary  word  'hate.' 
'If  any  man  comes  to  Me  and  does  not  hate  his  father 


THE  CONDITIONS   OF  DISCIPLESHIP    207 

and  mother  and  wife  and  children  and  brothers  and  sisters, 
yes  and  his  own  life  also,  he  cannot  be  My  disciple' 
(Luke  14 26).  There  is  a  certain  amount  of  generalisa- 
tion here,  which  may  be  editorial,  for  Luke  is  discussing 
the  conditions  of  following  Jesus;  but  the  mind  of  the 
Speaker  and  the  claim  He  makes  upon  others  are  in- 
distinguishable from  what  we  find  in  Matthew,  and 
curiosity  or  perplexity  centres  on  the  word  'hate.'  It  is 
often  assumed  that  this  is  a  fanatical  extravagance, 
conceivable  enough  in  a  Church  maddened  by  persecu- 
tion, and  hardly  knowing  what  it  said  in  the  vehemence 
with  which  it  asserted  its  fidelity  to  Jesus,  but  inconceivable 
in  the  lips  of  Jesus  Himself.  This,  however,  is  not  so 
clear.  Loisy  is  disposed  to  think  that  as  the  most  ex- 
pressive and  the  most  absolute  the  formula  of  Luke 
may  be  more  primitive  than  that  of  Matthew.  The 
latter  softens  down  the  terrible  severity  of  the  original: 
to  say  that  we  must  not  love  father  or  mother,  son  or 
daughter,  more  than  Jesus,  is  not  so  staggering  as  to  say 
that  we  must  hate  them  all  to  follow  Him.  It  suits 
better  the  reality  of  existence  and  the  common  condition 
of  men.1  The  question  is  a  difficult  one,  and  perhaps 
not  to  be  answered  at  all  by  weighing  Matthew  and  Luke 
against  each  other.  The  conditions  of  discipleship 
must  often  have  been  discussed  by  Jesus,  and  it  may  be 
that  where  divergences  of  this  kind  occur  we  have  to 
consider  not  two  reports  of  the  same  saying,  but  two 
lessons  on  the  same  subject.  Such  memorable  words 
of  Jesus  were  no  doubt  familiar  in  the  Church,  not  only 
through  Matthew  and  Luke,  or  through  a  written  source 
antecedent  to  them,  but  through  the  oral  teaching  of 
the  original  disciples;  and  even  if  Matthew  and  Luke 
rested  in  the  main  on  a  common  document  for  their 
knowledge  of  the  Lord's  words,  there  is  no  reason  why 

2  Les  Evangiles  Synoptiques,  i.  894. 


2o8  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

they  should  not  have  been  influenced  here  or  there  by 
reminiscences  of  these  words  in  forms  familiar  to  them 
independently  of  that  document.     It  is  not  necessary  to 
suppose  that  Matthew  mitigated  the  severity  of  Luke, 
or  that  Luke  intensified  to  fanaticism  the  austerity  of 
Matthew.     There   may   be   no   intention   at    all   in   the 
differences  between  them.     If   an  opinion   may  be  ex- 
pressed on  purely  subjective  grounds,  the  writer  is  in- 
clined to   agree  with  Loisy  that  the  term   'hate'   goes 
back  to  Jesus.     But  it  is  surely  a  mistake  to  say  that  it 
suggests  the  small  account  {le  peu  de  cas)  which  is  to  be 
made  of  family  bonds  and  affections  where  the  Kingdom 
of    heaven    is    concerned.     There    is    nothing    in    either 
evangelist  about  the  Kingdom  of  heaven;    what   Jesus 
speaks  of  in  both  is  the  relation  of  men  to  Himself — their 
being  worthy  or  not  worthy  of  Him,  able  or  unable  to 
be  His  disciples.     His  significance  is  not  merged  in  the 
Kingdom;   it  is  the  very  peculiarity  of  the  passages  that 
the  significance  of  the  Kingdom  is  absorbed   in  Him. 
Psychologically  it  seems  probable  that  the  terrible  word 
'hate'  expresses  the  pain  with  which  Jesus  Himself  had 
made  the  renunciation  which  He  demands  from  others. 
He  knew  how  sore  it  was,  and  'hate'  is  a  kind  of  vehe- 
ment protest  against  the  pleas  to  which  human  nature, 
and  much  that  is  good  in  it,  as  well  as  much  that  is  evil, 
is  only  too  ready  to  give  a  hearing.     It  is  as  though  He 
could  not  afford  to  let  these  tender  voices  be  heard,  so 
painful  would  it  be  to  silence  them.     But  this  is  the 
very  opposite  of  making  small  account  of  them — peu  de 
cas,  as  M.  Loisy  puts  it — and  we  are  glad  to  think  it  is 
the  very  opposite. 

In  both  Matthew  and  Luke  the  saying  which  requires 
the  sacrifice  of  natural  affection  is  followed  immediately 
by  another  which  raises  the  claim  of  Jesus,  if  it  be  pos- 
sible, to  a  still  higher  point.     In  Matthew's  form  it  runs, 


THE  CONDITIONS   OF   DISCIPLESHIP    209 

'And  he  that  doth  not  take  his  cross  and  follow  after  Me 
is  not  worthy  of  Me'  (Matt.  10 38).  The  habit  of  general- 
ising the  idea  of  the  cross,  and  applying  to  it  any  diffi- 
culty or  pain  that  comes  in  the  way  of  duty,  blinds  many 
to  the  extraordinary  force  of  these  words.  The  cross 
was  the  instrument  of  execution,  and  the  condemned 
criminal,  as  we  see  from  the  case  of  Jesus  Himself,  had 
to  carry  it  to  the  place  of  punishment.  The  English 
equivalent  of  the  words  in  Matt.  10 38  is  that  no  one  is 
worthy  of  Jesus  who  does  not  follow  Him,  as  it  were, 
with  the  rope  round  his  neck — ready  to  die  the  most 
ignominious  death  rather  than  prove  untrue.  Whether 
ver.  39  was  spoken  in  this  connexion  or  not,  it  was  again 
a  true  instinct  which  led  the  evangelist  to  introduce  it 
here:  'He  that  findeth  his  life  shall  lose  it,  and  he  that 
loseth  his  life  for  My  sake  (ivexev  ^oD)  shall  find  it.'  The 
typical  Christian  is  the  martyr,  the  man  who  lays  down 
his  life  in  the  cause  which  is  identical  with  Jesus;  it  is 
he  who  is  sure  of  immortality:  the  life  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God,  incorruptible  and  glorious,  is  his.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  man  who,  when  it  comes  to  the  decisive  point, 
declines  the  cross  and  falls  short  of  the  supreme  devotion 
required  of  the  martyr,  forfeits  everything.  In  the  im- 
mortality of  which  the  martyr  is  assured  he  has  neither 
part  nor  lot;  in  saving  his  life  he  has  lost  it.  It  is  not 
to  be  doubted  that  this  is  the  primary  meaning  of  the  words 
in  the  gospel,  however  they  may  have  to  be  attenuated 
to  match  with  circumstances  in  which  no  one  is  crucified 
or  hanged  for  following  Jesus;  and,  read  in  this  sense, 
they  confirm  and  deepen  the  impression  of  all  that  precedes. 
To  the  use  which  has  just  been  made  of  this  passage 
two  objections  are  commonly  raised.  One  is  that  the 
saying  about  taking  up  the  cross  obviously  refers  to  the 
death  of  Jesus  as  something  which  had  already  taken 
place,  and  that  therefore  it  cannot  be  regarded  as  coming 
14 


210  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

from  Jesus  Himself.  Holtzmann  l  even  thought  at  one 
time  that  such  passages  as  Gal.  2  19f-,  where  Paul  speaks 
of  being  crucified  with  Christ,  were  the  antecedents  of 
the  gospel  sayings  about  the  cross.  But  as  Loisy — who 
nevertheless  questions  the  genuineness  of  the  words 
ascribed  to  Jesus — points  out,  the  meaning  of  Paul  is  not 
that  of  the  passage  before  us. 2  When  the  true  meaning 
here  is  fixed,  the  writer  can  only  say  that  he  sees  no 
difficulty  whatever  in  believing  that  Jesus  spoke  in  pre- 
cisely such  terms.  He  was  not  the  first  person  to  be 
crucified;  and  though  crucifixion  was  not  a  Jewish  but  a 
Roman  punishment,  it  was  one  that  a  hundred  years  of 
Roman  government  must  have  made  sufficiently  familiar 
and  terrible  even  to  the  Jews.  If  Jesus  could  say  to  His 
followers,  The  man  who  is  not  ready  to  face  the  most 
shameful  death  in  My  cause  is  not  worthy  of  Me,  there 
is  no  reason  why  He  should  not  have  said,  The  man 
who  does  not  take  up  his  cross  and  follow  Me  is  not 
worthy  of  Me.  The  fact,  which  His  hearers  certainly 
could  not  foresee  at  the  moment,  that  He  was  Himself 
to  die  upon  the  Cross,  would  give  a  singular  pathos  to 
His  words  when  they  recalled  them  afterwards;  but  a 
knowledge  of  that  fact  was  not  necessary  to  the  under- 
standing of  them.  The  other  objection  refers  to  the 
words  ivexev  kfiou  in  Matt.  10 39.  In  what  is  regarded  as 
the  parallel  saying  in  Luke  17  33 — 'Whosoever  shall  seek 
to  gain  his  life  shall  lose  it,  but  whosoever  shall  lose  his 
life  shall  preserve  it' — ivexev  e/xod  is  wanting.  Hence 
Harnack  in  his  restoration  of  Q  would  omit  them  from 
this  saying:  he  thinks  Matthew  has  introduced  them  from 
Mark.3  On  this  ground  some  would  object  to  the  use 
which  we  make  of  the  words  as  throwing  light  on  Jesus' 
consciousness  of  Himself;    what  He  says  of  saving  the 

1  Handcotnmentar,  ad  loc.  2  Les  Evangiles  Synoptiques,  i.  895. 

3  Spriiche  u.  Reden  Jesu,  63. 


THE  CONDITIONS   OF  DISCIPLESHIP    211 

life  and  losing  it  (the  objection  runs)  is  said  with  the  ut- 
most generality;  it  is  a  law  of  the  Kingdom  of  God, 
but  it  has  no  necessary  relation  to  Him.  That  it  is  a 
law  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  true,  but  that  it  has  no 
necessary  relation  to  Jesus  must  not  be  taken  for  granted; 
that  is  the  very  point  at  issue.  The  whole  burden  of 
the  words  of  Jesus,  as  we  have  read  them  hitherto,  is  that 
He  has  a  relation  to  the  Kingdom  of  God  which  makes  it 
possible  for  Him  to  say  things  which  no  other  could  say; 
and  it  may  quite  well  be  so  here.  Not  that  we  should  lay 
any  stress  on  the  occurrence  of  hexev  ifxou  in  Matt.  10 39. 
It  is  quite  likely  that  a  saying  which  Jesus  must  often  have 
repeated,  and  which  occurs  twice  in  both  Matthew  and 
Luke,  was  not  always  given  in  exactly  the  same  words. 
The  principle  might  sometimes  be  stated  in  its  absolute 
generality,  and  sometimes  so  as  to  bring  out  the  peculiar 
way  in  which  Jesus  was  identified  with  the  cause  for  which 
men  were  to  be  prepared  to  die.  That  He  was  identified 
with  it  in  some  peculiar  way  has  been  made  abundantly 
clear  already,  and  does  not  depend  in  the  least  on  whether 
hexev  i[idu  was  introduced  into  Matt.  10 39  by  the  evan- 
gelist or  not.  The  parallel  in  Luke  17  33,  which  omits  it, 
is  certainly  in  every  other  respect  secondary  and  inferior 
to  Matthew :  it  is  the  evangelist  there  who  is  responsible  for 
izeptitorfaaaOat  and  twoyovrjiretj  and  who  may  be  responsible 
for  the  absence  of  hexev  ifiod.  In  the  passage  in  which 
Mark  preserves  this  saying,  and  in  which  Matthew  and 
Luke  repeat  it  (Mark  8 35,  Matt.  16 25,  Luke  o24),  all 
three  agree  in  inserting  the  words.  But,  as  has  already 
been  remarked,  the  legitimacy  of  using  the  passage  to 
illumine  the  consciousness  of  Jesus  does  not  depend 
upon  whether  on  any  given  occasion  he  added  hexzv 
l;u>b  when  He  spoke  of  saving  the  life  or  losing  it. 
The  principle  of  that  addition  is  secured  if  we  admit 
that  Jesus  said,  He  that  loveth  father  or  mother  more 


2i2  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

than  Me  is  not  worthy  of  Me,  and  he  that  taketh  not 
his  cross  and  followeth  after  Me  is  not  worthy  of  Me; 
the  evangelist  not  only  acted  with  a  good  conscience,  he 
wrote  out  of  the  same  mind  of  Christ  which  is  revealed 
in  ver.  39  when  he  inserted  (if  he  did  insert)  gvezev  ipou 
in  ver.  40.  There  is  nothing  theological  in  the  attitude 
of  Jesus  here,  no  filling  of  a  role,  whether  it  be  the  Mes- 
sianic or  another,  but  there  is  the  revelation  of  a  con- 
sciousness to  which  history  presents  no  parallel.  Con- 
sider how  great  this  Man  is  who  declares  that  the  final 
destiny  of  men  depends  on  whether  or  not  they  are  loyal 
to  Him,  and  who  demands  absolute  loyalty  though  it 
involve  the  sacrifice  of  the  tenderest  affections,  or  the 
surrender  of  life  in  the  most  ignominious  death.  It  is 
hard  to  take  it  in — so  hard  that  multitudes  of  minds 
seem  to  close  automatically  against  it,  and  yet  there  is 
nothing  surer  in  the  gospel  record. 

The  real  difficulty  in  accepting  these  sayings  is  the  an- 
tipathy of  the  general  mind  to  the  supernatural.  It  is 
one  form  of  this  when  people  refuse  to  believe  in  miracles, 
and  declare  that  a  man  who  can  still  a  storm  with  a 
word,  or  feed  five  thousand  people  with  five  loaves,  or 
call  the  dead  to  life,  is  a  man  with  no  reality  for  them. 
The  Jesus  who  lived  a  historical  life  must  have  lived  it 
within  common  historical  and  human  limits,  and  when 
actions  are  ascribed  to  Him  which  transcend  these  limits, 
we  know  that  we  have  lost  touch  with  fact.  The  same 
intellectual  tendency  which  leads  to  this  conclusion  really, 
however,  pushes  much  further.  Its  latent  conviction 
is  not  only  that  Jesus  must  only  have  done  what  other 
people  could  do,  but  that  Jesus  can  only  have  been  what 
other  people  are.  The  mystery  of  personality  is  ad- 
mitted and  perhaps  enlarged  upon  by  those  who  thus 
judge,  but  the  measure  of  Jesus  is  taken  beforehand. 
A  person  who  seriously  says  what  Jesus  says  in  Matt. 


THE  CONDITIONS   OF   DISCIPLESHIP    213 

I0  32-38  js  a  person  for  whom  their  world  has  no  room, 
and  they  have  no  disposition  to  reconstruct  it  so  that 
it  shall  have  room.  Such  a  person  is  not  one  more  added 
to  the  population,  who  can  be  accommodated  or  can 
find  accommodation  for  himself,  like  the  rest.  He  is 
not  another  like  our  neighbours,  with  whom  we  can 
negotiate,  and  to  whom  we  can  more  or  less  be  what 
they  are  to  us.  He  stands  alone.  In  the  strictest  sense 
which  we  can  put  upon  the  words  He  is  a  supernatural 
person.  He  claims  a  unique  place  in  our  life.  As  our 
examination  of  the  New  Testament  has  shown,  His 
followers  have  always  given  Him  such  a  place;  and  what 
we  wish  to  insist  upon  is  that  in  doing  so  they  have  not 
propagated  a  religion  inconsistent  with  His  will,  but  have 
only  recognised  the  facts  involved  in  His  revelation  of 
Himself. 

It  may  quite  well  be  that  there  are  those  who  do  not 
wish  to  give  Him  the  place  He  claimed,  and  the  place 
He  held  from  the  beginning  in  the  faith  of  His  disciples. 
It  is  impossible  to  have  a  merely  intellectual  relation 
to  a  person:  all  relations  to  persons  are  moral.  The 
person  who  comes  before  us  speaking  as  Jesus  speaks  in 
this  passage  is  least  of  all  one  in  whom  we  can  have  only 
a  scientific  interest.  If  we  admit  the  reality  of  the  Per- 
son, we  feel  at  once  that  He  not  only  said  these  things 
to  men  in  Palestine,  but  is  saying  them  to  ourselves  now; 
and  to  feel  this  is  to  be  brought  face  to  face  with  the  su- 
preme moral  responsibility.  It  is  not  always,  in  human 
nature  to  welcome  this,  and  the  instinctive  desire  of  human 
nature  to  avoid  responsibility  so  exacting  and  tremendous 
is  no  doubt  a  latent  motive  in  much  of  the  disintegrating 
criticism  of  the  self-revelation  of  Jesus.  It  is  not  saying 
anything  personal  to  say  this.  There  is  that  in  man 
which  does  not  wish  to  have  anything  to  do  with  such  a 
person  as  Jesus  here  reveals  Himself  to  be;  and  when  that 


214  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

element  in  man  tells  upon  the  criticism  of  the  gospels,  it 
tells  as  a  solvent  on  all  that  gives  Jesus  His  peculiar  place. 
Nevertheless,  His  place  is  sure.  There  are  things  too 
wonderful  for  invention  or  imagination,  things  which 
could  never  have  been  conceived  unless  they  were  true; 
and  not  to  speak  of  the  witness  of  the  Spirit,  or  their  his- 
torical authentication,  the  sayings  of  Jesus  that  we  have 
just  been  considering  belong  to  this  class  of  things.  We 
should  accept  them,  were  it  for  nothing  else,  because 
of  the  incredible  way  in  which  they  transcend  all  imagin- 
able words  of  common  men. 

The  Sermon  on  the  Mount 

(Matt.  5-7,    Luke    6 20  49,    and   other    parallels   to    Matthew) 

A  considerable  part  of  the  matter  common  to  Matthew 
and  Luke  is  found  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  (Matt. 
5-7,  Luke  620"49).  This  sermon,  as  it  is  presented  in 
Matthew,  is  to  a  large  extent  the  composition  of  the 
evangelist,  but  it  is  not  an  arbitrary  or  free  composition. 
Comparison  with  Luke  shows  that  the  framework  of  it 
was  fixed  before  either  evangelist  wrote:  it  began  with 
beatitudes  and  ended  with  the  parable  of  the  builders 
on  the  rock  and  the  sand,  and  it  had  as  its  kernel  the 
enforcement,  in  the  boldest  and  most  paradoxical  terms, 
of  the  supremacy  of  the  law  of  love.  In  all  probability, 
therefore,  an  actual  discourse  of  Jesus,  corresponding 
to  this  in  outline,  lay  behind  it;  and  when  Matthew, 
according  to  his  custom — a  custom  which  we  have  just 
seen  illustrated  in  His  charge  to  the  Twelve — expands 
this  by  introducing  into  it  congruous  or  relevant  mat- 
ter which  strictly  belonged  to  other  occasions,  we  have 
no  call  to  say  that  he  is  misrepresenting  Jesus.  In 
point  of  fact,  a  large  proportion  of  what  he  does  intro- 
duce, though  not  found  in  Luke's  Sermon  on  the  Mount, 
is  found  elsewhere  in  the  third  evangelist,  and  is  recog- 


THE   SERMON  ON  THE  MOUNT         215 

nised  by  critics  as  belonging  to  the  oldest  stratum  of 
evangelic  tradition.  It  is  impossible  to  evade  the  im- 
pression that  in  both  evangelists  the  sermon  has  the 
character  of  a  manifesto,  and  it  is  the  more  important 
therefore  to  read  it  with  a  view  to  the  self-consciousness 
of  the  Speaker.  It  may  be  alleged,  indeed,  that  this 
character  of  manifesto  is  imposed  upon  it  by  the  evan- 
gelists, and  that  it  is  only  their  conception  of  Jesus  which 
can  be  inferred  from  it,  not  Jesus'  sense  of  His  own 
position  and  authority.  Perhaps  if  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  stood  alone  in  the  gospels  the  case  for  this  opinion 
would  have  more  weight,  but  when  we  remember  the 
self-revelation  of  Jesus  in  such  utterances  as  have  already 
been  examined,  we  shall  probably  feel  that  we  ought 
not  to  be  too  hasty  in  declaring  that  this  or  that  is  due  not 
to  Him  but  to  the  reporter. 

There  are  three  particulars  which  we  have  to  consider 
in  this  connexion. 

(1)  Both  in  Matthew  and  in  Luke  the  sermon  begins 
with  beatitudes,  and  though  the  beatitudes  differ  con- 
siderably both  in  number  and  in  expression  they  have 
this  singular  feature  in  common,  that  at  a  certain  point 
the  address,  so  to  speak,  becomes  more  personal;  the 
beatitude  is  put  with  emphasis  in  the  second  person,  and 
— what  is  to  be  particularly  noticed — the  personality  of 
Jesus  Himself  is  introduced  into  it.  'Blessed,'  it  runs 
in  Matthew,  'are  ye  when  men  shall  revile  you  and  per- 
secute you  and  say  all  manner  of  evil  against  you  falsely 
for  My  sake'  (5  ").  In  Luke  it  reads,  'Blessed  are  ye 
when  men  hate  you  and  when  they  separate  you  and 
reproach  you  and  cast  out  your  name  as  evil  (or :  give  you 
a  bad  name1)  for  the  Son  of  Man's  sake.'  When  we  re- 
member that  the  words  of  Jesus  were  at  first  preserved 

1  Wellhausen  thinks  the  Aramaic  original  had  this  meaning :    Das 
Evangelium  Lucae,  24. 


216  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

by  being  preached,  we  need  not  be  astonished  at  such 
variations  as  the  one  underlined.  To  the  preacher,  Jesus 
and  the  Son  of  Man  were  one,  but  the  Son  of  Man  was  a 
solemn  way  of  saying  Jesus;  and  it  would  be  natural  for 
him  to  put  this  title  into  Jesus'  lips  whenever  he  was  re- 
producing words  in  which  the  personality  of  the  Speaker 
was  of  signal  importance.  There  is  not  more  in  'for  the 
Son  of  Man's  sake'  than  in  'for  My  sake,'  but  it  has  a 
certain  rhetorical  advantage;  there  is  more  in  it  for  the 
ear  and  the  imagination ;  and  when  the  word  of  Jesus  was 
not  backed,  so  to  speak,  by  His  bodily  presence,  but  only 
reported  by  a  preacher,  we  can  understand  the  preacher's 
motive  for  preferring  the  title  to  the  pronoun.  Harnack, 
however,  and  many  others  have  argued  that  here,  as  at 
Matt,  io39,  the  words  referring  to  the  person  of  Jesus 
should  be  omitted  altogether.1  The  mere  fact  that 
Matthew  and  Luke  vary  in  reporting  them,  in  the  way 
which  has  just  been  explained,  is  certainly  no  reason  for 
omitting  them:  and  just  as  little  are  the  other  variations 
which  have  some  MS.  support.  The  old  Syriac  versions 
read  'for  My  name's  sake,'  which  is  possibly  not  a  vari- 
ant, but  an  idiomatic  rendering  of  evexsv  i/j.ou;  and  it  is 
only  a  mechanical  repetition  from  the  previous  verse 
when  some  'Western'  MSS.  read  'for  righteousness' 
sake'  instead  of  'for  My  sake.'  There  is  no  authority 
whatever  for  any  form  of  the  beatitude  which  does  not 
represent  the  reproach  and  persecution  of  which  the  dis- 
ciples were  the  objects  as  taking  place  on  account  of  some- 
thing; and  if  Jesus  could  speak  of  Himself  as  we  have  seen 
Him  speak  in  the  charge  to  the  Twelve — if  He  could  say, 
Whoso  confesseth  Me  before  men,  him  will  I  also  confess 
before  My  Father  in  heaven — there  is  no  reason  why  He 
should  not  have  said,  Blessed  are  ye  when  men  shall  revile 
you  for  My  sake.     The  truth  rather  is  that  the  suffering 

JSee  above,  p.  210:  Harnack,  Spruche  u.  Reden  Jesu,  40. 


THE  SERMON  ON  THE   MOUNT         217 

which  good  men  always  endure  in  a  bad  world — that  is, 
suffering  for  righteousness'  sake  (Matt.  5  10) — becomes, 
where  the  disciples  of  Jesus  are  concerned,  definitely  and 
specifically  suffering  for  His  sake.  That  is  not  only  their 
consciousness  about  it,  but  His;  it  is  not  only  the  mind 
of  the  evangelists  which  we  encounter  in  this  ivexev  ijiou 
or  ivexev  rod  oloo  rod  dv0pd>7zou;  it  is  the  mind  of  the  Lord 
Himself.1  We  cannot  measure  what  it  means  that  a  person 
who  lived  a  human  life  like  others  should  identify  Him- 
self in  this  extraordinary  way  with  the  cause  of  God  and 
righteousness  and  should,  it  is  not  enough  to  say  claim, 
but  rather  assume  that  He  will  obtain,  that  martyr  devo- 
tion to  which  only  righteousness  and  God  are  entitled;  but 
until  we  see  this  we  do  not  see  Jesus.  A  beatitude  com- 
bines the  expression  of  a  rare  and  high  virtue  with  a  rare 
and  high  felicity:  what  are  we  to  say  of  the  Person  for 
whom  the  supreme  beatitude  is  that  men  should  suffer 
shame  for  His  sake?  We  may  surely  say  that  He  is 
revealing  Himself  as  the  Person  to  whom  the  only  legit- 
imate attitude  is  the  attitude  of  the  New  Testament 
Christians  to  their  Lord. 

(2)  The  second  point  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
which  calls  for  particular  consideration  here  is  what  may 
be  described  as  the  legislative  consciousness  of  Jesus. 
A  great  part  of  the  sermon  in  Matthew — that  in  which 
Jesus  contrasts  the  new  law  of  the  Kingdom  with  what 
was  said  to  them  of  old  time — is  not  reproduced  in  Luke, 
but  it  can  hardly  have  been  unknown  to  him.  In  ch. 
629f-  he  has  a  parallel  to  that  critical  part  of  it  which  is 
preserved  in  Matt.  5  39f-,  and  in  ch.  6 27  the  peculiar 
and  awkward  expression  dXXd  ufj.iv  Xiya)  toT$  dxo6ou<nv 
(but  I  say  unto  you  that  hear)  seems  most  easily  ex- 
plained  as  due  to  the  influence  of  the  formula  which 

1  On  the  various  readings  and  the  interpretations  of  this  passage,  v. 
Zahn,  Das  Evangelium  des  Matthdus,  193. 


218  JESUS   AND  THE   GOSPEL 

recurs  in  Matthew,  Ye  have  heard  that  it  was  said,  but 
I  say  unto  you.1  The  common  source  of  Matthew 
and  Luke  must  therefore  have  represented  Jesus  in  that 
attitude  which  is  fully  illustrated  in  Matt.  5  21~48 — the 
attitude  of  one  conscious  that  in  Himself  the  earlier 
revelation  of  God's  will  has  been  transcended,  and  a 
new  and  higher  revelation  made.  It  did  not  belong  to 
Luke's  purpose,  writing  as  he  did  for  Gentile  Christians, 
whose  interest  in  the  Old  Law  was  slight,  to  emphasise 
this  contrast;  and  though  it  is  emphasised  in  Matthew, 
who  had  in  view  a  community  brought  up  under  the 
law  as  Judaism  understood  it,  it  does  not  originate  with 
him.  It  is  earlier  than  either  evangelist,  and  undoubtedly 
goes  back  to  Jesus  Himself.  Possibly  He  did  not  on  any 
one  occasion  accumulate  all  the  illustrations  of  it  which 
Matthew  gathers  into  his  sermon  here,  but,  as  we  shall 
see,  he  betrays  in  innumerable  ways  the  sense  of  the  orig- 
inality and  absoluteness  of  the  revelation  which  has  come 
into  the  world  in  Him.  It  is  quite  common  to  speak  of 
Jesus  as  a  prophet,  and  so  even  disciples  spoke  of  Him 
from  the  first  (Luke  24  19),  but  in  truth  there  can  be  no 
greater  contrast  than  that  of  the  prophetic  consciousness, 
as  we  can  discern  it  from  the  Old  Testament,  and  the  con- 
sciousness of  Jesus  as  it  is  revealed  in  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount.  There  is  not  in  the  Old  Testament  the  remotest 
analogy  to  such  words  as,  Ye  have  heard  that  it  was  said  to 
them  of  old  time,  but  I  say  unto  you.  The  sovereign  legis- 
lative authority  which  breathes  throughout  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  stands  absolutely  alone  in  Scripture.  It  is  the 
more  remarkable,  when  we  consider  the  profound  rever- 
ence which  Jesus  had  for  the  earlier  revelation,  that  He 
moves  in  this  perfect  freedom  and  independence  in  presence 
of  it.     If  any  one  says  that  it  is  the  evangelist  to  whom 

1  See  B.  Weiss,  Das  Matthausevangelium  u.  seine  Lucas-par allelen, 
170,  174. 


THE   SERMON   ON  THE   MOUNT         219 

this  representation  is  due — that  it  is  he  who  pictures 
Jesus  as  legislating  in  this  tone  of  sovereignty  and  finality 
— and  that  we  cannot  reason  from  His  recurrent  formula, 
Ye  have  heard,  but  I  say  unto  you,  to  the  mind  of  Jesus 
Himself,  we  are  entitled  to  ask  for  the  ground  of  such 
an  assertion.  Even  if  we  granted  that  the  recurrent  for- 
mula of  the  evangelist  did  not  reproduce  the  ipsissima 
verba  of  Jesus,  we  should  be  entitled  to  say  that  it  con- 
densed the  impression  which  the  teaching  and  the  attitude 
of  Jesus  made  on  some  one  in  immediate  contact  with  Him; 
and  such  an  impression  is  part  of  the  word  of  the  Lord, 
whether  it  is  given  in  words  which  He  Himself  used  or 
not.  But  it  is  only  if  we  insulate  the  report  of  the  Sermon, 
and  approach  it  with  the  presupposition  that  the  Speaker 
cannot  be  any  more,  essentially,  than  one  of  His  hearers 
— cannot  have  a  relation  to  God  or  truth  or  the  King- 
dom essentially  different  from  theirs— that  we  have  any 
motive  for  questioning  the  evangelist's  representation. 
We  have  only  to  recall  the  fact  that  behind  the  new 
Law  stands  the  Person  to  whom  we  have  been  intro- 
duced in  the  baptism,  the  Person  who  in  the  beatitudes 
and  in  the  charge  to  the  Twelve  claims  and  assumes 
that  He  will  find  an  absolute  devotion  on  the  part  of 
men,  to  feel  that  the  formula  of  the  evangelist  is  the 
congruous  and  natural  expression  of  Jesus'  consciousness 
of  Himself.  If  He  said  other  things  about  which  no 
question  could  reasonably  be  raised — if  He  said  what 
we  read  in  Matt.  5  n,  Matt.  10  32, 33- 37— then  there  is  not 
the  slightest  reason  to  suppose  that  He  could  not  have 
spoken  of  Himself  as  He  does  throughout  the  legislative 
part  of  the  Sermon;  and  there  is  the  authority  not  only 
of  Matthew,  but  of  the  older  evangelic  source  common 
to  Matthew  and  Luke,  for  believing  that  He  did  so  speak. 
So  far  from  the  representation  in  the  evangelist  being 
historically  incredible,   it  falls  in  with  all  that  is  most 


220  JESUS   AND  THE   GOSPEL 

surely  known  of  Jesus'  sense  of  what  He  was;  it  belongs 
to  the  completeness  and  concrete  reality  of  the  testimony 
concerning  Him,  that  when  He  spoke  of  the  new  law  of 
life  for  His  disciples  He  should  speak  not  otherwise  but 
with  the  deliberate  sovereign  authority  which  is  again  and 
again  exhibited  here. 

No  mention  has  yet  been  made  of  the  words  with 
which  the  sermon  proper,  and  the  relation  of  Jesus  to 
the  new  law  and  the  old,  are  introduced  in  Matthew: 
Think  not  that  I  came  to  destroy  the  law  or  the  prophets: 
I  did  not  come  to  destroy  but  to  fulfil.  There  is  no 
exact  parallel  to  this  saying  elsewhere  in  the  gospels, 
though  if  we  may  judge  from  many  examples  Jesus  was 
in  the  habit  of  reflecting  on  His  mission,  and  giving 
expression  to  His  reflections,  in  this  form.  For  instance, 
/  came  not  to  call  the  righteous,  but  sinners  (Matt.  9  13) ; 
/  came  not  to  send  peace  but  a  sword  (Matt.  10 34 f) ;  The 
Son  of  Man  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto  but  to  min- 
ister (Matt.  20 28);  J  came  to  cast  fire  upon  the  earth 
(Luke  1 2  49) ;  The  Son  of  Man  came  to  seek  and  to  save 
that  which  was  lost  (Luke  19 n).  Several  of  these  in- 
stances are  found  also  in  Mark,  and  the  same  formula 
occurs  with  characteristic  variations  in  John:  /  came 
that  they  might  have  life  (10  10) ;  /  came  not  to  judge  the 
world  (12  47);  for  this  cause  have  I  come  into  the  world 
that  I  might  bear  witness  to  the  truth  (18  37).  The  re- 
currence of  this  mode  of  thought  and  expression  in  all 
the  gospels  is  most  easily  understood  on  the  assumption 
that  it  goes  back  to  Jesus  Himself;  it  was  so  character- 
istic of  Him  to  think  and  speak  of  the  purpose  of  His 
mission — He  was  so  distinctly  an  object  of  thought  to 
Himself — that  no  one  could  report  Him  truly  who  did 
not  report  this.  Hence  the  much-discussed  saying  of 
Matthew  5  17  is  in  all  probability  genuine.  That  as  an 
expression  of  the  real  attitude  and  the  actual  achievement 


THE   SERMON  ON  THE  MOUNT         221 

of  Jesus  it  is  both  true  and  felicitous,  there  is  no  reason  to 
deny,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  see  why  it  should  be  ascribed 
not  to  Him,  but  to  another  reflecting  on  His  significance. 
We  have  seen  much  reason  to  believe  that  no  one  reflected 
so  profoundly  on  His  significance  as  He  did  Himself,  and 
the  very  fact  that  one  subject  of  reflection  was  His  re- 
lation to  the  ancient  revelation,  alike  in  law  and  in  proph- 
ecy, proves  how  singular  His  consciousness  of  Himself 
must  have  been.  Think  it  out  as  we  may,  it  was  Jesus' 
consciousness  of  Himself  that  all  that  God  had  initiated  in 
the  earlier  dispensation  of  requirement  and  promise  was 
to  be  consummated  in  Him;  and  that  puts  Him  into  a 
solitary  and  incomparable  place.  That  is  the  place  which 
He  holds  in  the  faith  of  the  primitive  Church,  but  He 
does  not  owe  it  to  that  faith.  It  is  the  place  which  through- 
out His  life  He  assumes  as  His  own ;  He  only  accepts  it 
from  the  believing  Church  because  He  has  all  along  made 
it  apparent  that  it  is  His  due.  It  is  not  necessary  for  our 
purpose  to  go  into  detail  about  the  relation  of  Jesus  to 
the  Law; !  and  His  consciousness  of  Himself  in  relation  to 
prophecy,  or  to  the  purpose  of  God  as  adumbrated  and 
initiated  in  the  Old  Testament,  will  come  up  better  in 
another  connexion. 

(3)  The  third  point  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  at 
which  the  self-consciousness  of  Jesus  is  opened  to  us  is 
that  in  which  He  is  represented  as  the  final  Judge  of 
men.  Here  there  is  some  difficulty  in  determining  what 
precisely  Jesus  said.  In  both  Matthew  and  Luke,  what 
immediately  precedes  the  close  of  the  Sermon  is  the 
passage  on  the  trees  which  bear  good  and  bad  fruit.  It 
is  by  their  fruit  they  are  known,  and  Matthew  prepares 
for  what  is  to  follow  by  inserting  verse  19:  Every  tree 
that  bringeth  not  forth  good  fruit  is  hewn  down  and  cast 
into  the  fire.     This  has  nothing  corresponding  to  it  in 

1  See  article  'Law  in  the  New  Testament'  in  Hastings'  Bible  Dictionary. 


222  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

Luke,  who  introduces  at  this  point  a  saying  found  much 
later  in  Matt.  (12  35),  carrying  on  the  idea  that  as  trees 
are  to  be  known  by  their  fruit,  so  men  also  have  un- 
mistakable ways  of  showing  what  they  are.  But  after 
this  little  divergence  the  two  evangelists  run  parallel 
again.  The  difficulty  is,  that  though  the  parallelism  is 
unmistakable  it  is  far  from  close,  and  that  the  elements 
of  it  have  to  be  brought  together  from  different  quarters 
in  Luke.  The  passage  is  so  important  that  it  is  worth 
while  to  go  into  some  detail.  In  Matt.  7  21~23  we  read: 
'Not  every  one  who  says  to  Me,  Lord,  Lord,  shall  enter 
into  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  but  he  who  doeth  the  will 
of  My  Father  who  is  in  heaven.  Many  shall  say  to  Me 
in  that  day,  Lord,  Lord,  have  we  not  prophesied  in  Thy 
name,  and  in  Thy  name  cast  out  devils,  and  in  Thy 
name  done  many  mighty  works?  And  then  shall  I 
openly  declare  unto  them,  I  never  knew  you:  depart 
from  Me,  ye  that  work  lawlessness.'  In  Luke's  ac- 
count of  the  Sermon  only  the  first  sentence  of  this  has  an 
echo  at  the  corresponding  place  (6 46) :  '  And  why  do 
you  call  Me  Lord,  Lord,  and  do  not  the  things  which 
I  say?'  The  formula  Lord,  Lord,  the  occurrence  of 
the  saying  at  this  precise  point,  and  the  use  to  which 
it  is  put,  are  a  strong  argument  that  some  equivalent  of 
it  stood  here  in  the  source  common  to  Matthew  and  Luke. 
It  is  not  apparent,  however,  that  this  equivalent,  which 
according  to  Harnack  *  was  probably  more  remote  from 
Matthew  and  Luke  than  the  source  they  ordinarily  used 
in  common,  made  any  reference  to  the  last  judgment.  Such 
a  reference,  nevertheless,  which  is  introduced  by  Matthew 
here,  is  found  further  on  in  Luke  in  parabolic  form 
(i32flf).  The  parable  deals  with  persons  who  to  their 
own  astonishment  find  themselves  at  last  excluded  from 
the  Kingdom — the  same  class  of  person  in  view  in  Matt. 

1  Spriiche  u.  Reden  Jesu,  52. 


THE   SERMON  ON  THE  MOUNT         223 

j  22  f .  <  Then  shall  ye  begin  to  say,  We  did  eat  and  drink 
in  Thy  presence,  and  Thou  didst  teach  in  our  streets. 
And  He  shall  say,  I  tell  you,  I  know  you  not  whence  ye  are: 
depart  from  Me,  all  ye  workers  of  unrighteousness.' 
It  is  usually  argued  that  in  comparison  with  Matt.  7  22  f ■ 
this  must  be  the  more  accurate  version  of  Jesus'  words. 
He  is  speaking  to  His  contemporaries,  and  when  He  is 
represented — for  He  is  of  course  the  ohodtrF-nrr^  of  the 
parable— as  saying  to  them  at  last,  I  do  not  know  you 
(Luke  13  25),  it  is  easy  to  imagine  their  astonished  re- 
monstrance: 'Not  know  us!  Why,  we  ate  and  drank 
with  you,  and  it  was  in  our  streets  you  taught.'  In 
comparison  with  this,  Matthew's  version  reads  much 
more  like  a  preacher's  application  of  the  words  of  Jesus 
in  the  apostolic  age,  and  with  its  experiences  in  view, 
than  like  a  precise  report  of  what  Jesus  said.  There 
was  no  such  thing  as  prophesying  in  the  name  of  Jesus 
till  after  Pentecost,  and  the  words  which  Matthew  puts 
into  the  lips  of  Jesus  would  not  have  been  intelligible  to 
any  one  when  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  was  spoken. 
No  one  then  had  seen  or  could  anticipate  prophesying, 
casting  out  devils,  and  working  miracles,  by  the  name 
of  Jesus.  But  while  this  is  so,  the  application  which 
the  evangelist  makes  to  his  contemporaries  in  the  apos- 
tolic church— as  though  Jesus  were  speaking  to  them, 
and  not  to  His  own  contemporaries  in  His  lifetime — 
of  the  words  which  Jesus  actually  used,  is  quite  legitimate; 
it  does  not  in  the  least  misrepresent  the  mind  of  Jesus. 
In  Matthew  and  in  Luke  alike— in  the  simpler  form  of 
words  which  is  strictly  appropriate  to  the  lips  of  Jesus 
Himself  (Luke  13  2Gf),  and  in  the  more  ample  and  rhetor- 
ical  one  in  which  the  evangelist  (speaking  in  the  same 
spirit  as  Paul  in  1  Cor.  13  l"8)  strives  to  bring  home  the 
moral  import  of  them  to  the  conscience  of  the  next  gen- 
eration— the  attitude  of  Tesus  is  the  same.     It  is  His  ac- 


224  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

ceptance  or  rejection  of  men  on  which  their  final  destiny 
depends.  It  is  His  voice  by  which  they  are  admitted  to 
or  excluded  from  the  Kingdom  of  God.  Not  that  this 
is  done  arbitrarily;  the  very  purpose  of  these  solemn 
utterances  is  to  show  that  there  is  nothing  arbitrary  in  it. 
No  formal  recognition  of  Jesus,  no  casual  acquaintance 
with  Him,  can  be  regarded  as  a  substitute  for  doing 
what  He  says  (Luke  6  46) ,  or  doing  the  will  of  His  Father 
in  heaven  (Matt.  7  21).  But  in  both  gospels  alike,  and  in  a 
source  which  their  very  divergences  at  this  point  show  to 
lie  far  behind  them  both,  it  is  He  who  pronounces  on  the 
value  of  every  human  life.  It  is  the  consciousness  that 
the  Speaker  is  nothing  less  than  the  final  Judge  of  all 
which  makes  the  parable  of  the  builders  on  the  rock  and 
the  sand,  with  which  the  Sermon  closes,  the  most  solemn 
and  overpowering  of  all  the  words  of  Jesus. 

The  place  of  Christ  as  Judge,  a  place  which  He  has 
held  in  Christian  faith  from  the  beginning,  is  often  pre- 
sented in  another  light.  It  is  regarded  as  a  formal  piece 
of  theology,  with  no  support  in  the  mind  of  Jesus.  When 
men  came  to  believe  that  Jesus  was  the  Messiah,  they 
attached  to  Him  (it  is  said)  all  the  traditional  Messianic 
predicates,  and  among  others  this,  that  when  He  came 
in  His  Messianic  power  He  would  come  as  Judge; !  but 
the  transference  of  these  predicates  to  Jesus  was  a  purely 
formal  consequence  of  regarding  Him  as  the  Messiah; 
it  was  a  historical  accident,  due  to  a  peculiarity  of  the  Mes- 
sianic dogmatic;  there  is  nothing  vital  in  it,  nothing  which 
is  due  to  Jesus  Himself.  There  could  not  possibly  be  a 
more  complete  misconception  or  misrepresentation  of  the 
facts  with  which  we  have  to  deal  in  this  connexion.     What- 

1  How  far  this  is  true  in  point  of  fact  is  rather  doubtful;  in  the  Old 
Testament  it  is  always  God  who  is  Judge,  not  the  Messiah,  and  it  is  not 
clear  that  in  the  New  Testament  period  the  function  had  been  transferred 
from  God  to  His  Anointed.  See  Bousset,  Die  Religion  des  Judentums, 
c.  xiii. 


THE  SERMON  ON  THE  MOUNT         225 

ever  is  formal  in  the  New  Testament,  the  belief  in  Jesus 
as  Judge  is  not.  It  is  a  belief  which  may  be  clothed  here 
and  there  in  forms  which  Jewish  theology  supplied  to  the 
imagination,  but  it  rests  on  personal  experiences  and  on 
the  sense  of  Jesus'  attitude  to  men.  Whatever  else  hap- 
pened to  men  in  the  presence  of  Jesus,  they  were  judged. 
They  knew  they  were.  They  had  experiences  which 
prompted  such  utterances  as  Luke  5  8:  Depart  from  me, 
for  I  am  a  sinful  man,  O  Lord;  or  John  4 29:  Come,  see  a 
man  that  told  me  all  things  that  ever  I  did.  Such  ex- 
periences furnished  them  with  irresistible  evidence  that  this 
wonderful  Person  might  be  the  Christ;  they  were  not  idle 
deductions  from  the  fact  that  He  was  the  Christ.  It 
was  impossible  not  to  generalise  them,  and  to  realise 
that  with  everything  else  that  Jesus  might  be  to  men,  He 
was  also  their  Judge.  He  Himself,  it  may  be  said, 
generalised  them,  or  realised  in  His  own  mind  all  that 
they  involved.  Not  to  speak  meanwhile  of  passages  in 
which  He  tells  of  the  coming  of  the  Son  of  Man  and  of 
the  judgment  attendant  upon  it  (e.g.  Matt.  16  27,  25  31"46), 
we  have  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  when  every  allow- 
ance has  been  made  which  historical  criticism  can  de- 
mand, a  revelation  of  the  mind  of  Jesus  and  of  His  attitude 
to  men,  which  covers  all  that  is  meant  by  calling  Him  their 
final  Judge.  Resting  as  it  does  on  the  oldest  of  evangelic 
records,  the  source  which  lies  behind  the  first  and  third 
gospels,  and  at  an  important  point  very  far  behind  them, 
this  revelation  brings  us  as  close  to  Jesus  as  we  can 
historically  be  brought.  It  is  not  the  witness  of  apostolic 
faith  to  which  it  introduces  us,  but  the  witness  of  Jesus 
to  Himself.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  it  may  be 
summed  up  in  the  solemn  words  of  James  (412):  One 
only  is  the  Lawgiver  and  Judge,  and  that  One  He  with 
whom  we  are  confronted  here. 
15 


226  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

The  Healing  of  the  Centurion's  Servant 

(Matt.  8  5-!3,  Luke  7  "•,  13  28-30) 

In  Luke  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  followed  im- 
mediately by  the  account  of  Jesus'  return  to  Capernaum, 
and  the  healing  there  of  a  centurion's  servant.  The 
same  incident  is  recorded  in  Matt.  8  5"13,  and  comparison 
of  Luke  7  '  with  Matt.  7  28,  8 5,  makes  it  more  than  prob- 
able that  the  sequence  here  indicated  goes  back  to  the 
common  source.1  We  have  this  early  authority,  therefore, 
for  one  of  the  healing  miracles,  and  in  spite  of  the  notable 
variation  of  the  evangelists  with  regard  to  the  centurion's 
mode  of  approaching  Jesus,  there  is  an  even  more  not- 
able agreement — it  virtually  amounts  to  identity — in 
their  report  both  of  the  officers'  words  and  of  Jesus'  reply. 
'Sir,  I  am  not  worthy  that  Thou  shouldest  come  under 
my  roof,  but  speak  the  word  only  and  my  boy  shall  be 
healed.  For  I  also  am  a  man  under  authority,  having 
under  myself  soldiers,  and  I  say  to  one  Go,  and  he  goeth; 
and  to  another,  Come,  and  he  cometh;  and  to  my  ser- 
vant, Do  this,  and  he  doeth  it'  (Matt.  8  8  f-  Luke  76ff). 
The  centurion  evidently  believed  that  Jesus  had  at  His 
disposal  spiritual  messengers  who  could  execute  His 
commands,  just  as  he  himself  had  soldiers  and  slaves, 
and  that  therefore  His  personal  presence  was  not  essen- 
tial to  the  carrying  out  of  His  will.  We  do  not  need 
to  accept  his  interpretation  of  the  way  in  which  Jesus 
exercised  His  power:  the  point  is  that  Jesus  enthusi- 
astically welcomed  and  approved  his  attitude.  'When 
He  heard,  He  marvelled  and  said  to  those  who  followed, 
Verily  I  say  unto  you,  not  even  in  Israel  have  I  found 

1  So  Harnack,  Spriiche  u.  Reden  Jesu,  54,  who  says  it  follows  'with 
certainty  that  great  parts  of  the  Sermon  stood  together  in  Q  and  were  fol- 
lowed by  this  narrative.'  Allen,  Commentary  on  St.  Matthew,  p.  79, 
doubts  this  because  of  the  remarkable  differences  between  Matthew  and 
Luke. 


THE  CENTURION'S  FAITH  227 

such  faith.'  We  see  here  that  Jesus  wanted  to  find 
faith,  and  we  see  also  what  faith  is.  It  is  that  attitude 
of  the  soul  to  Jesus  which  is  confident  that  the  saving 
help  of  God  is  present  in  Him,  and  that  there  is  no 
limit  to  what  it  can  do.  It  has  become  a  commonplace 
to  point  out  that  whereas  in  the  theological  books  of  the 
New  Testament  Jesus  Himself  is  the  object  of  faith,  in 
the  synoptic  gospels,  which  are  truer  to  history,  this  is 
never  the  case.  The  only  case  in  the  synoptics  in  which 
Jesus  speaks  of  men  believing  on  Himself  is  Matt.  18  6 
(these  little  ones  who  believe  on  Me),  and  in  the  parallel 
passage  in  Mark  g42  the  decisive  words  'on  Me'  are 
wanting.  Faith  in  the  synoptics,  it  is  argued — that  is, 
faith  as  it  was  understood  and  required  by  Jesus — is 
always  faith  in  God.  In  this  there  is  both  truth  and 
error.  God  is  undoubtedly  the  only  and  the  ultimate 
object  of  faith,  but  what  the  synoptic  gospels  in  point  of 
fact  present  to  us  on  this  and  many  other  occasions  is 
(to  borrow  the  language  of  1  Peter  1 21)  the  spectacle  of 
men  who  believe  in  God  through  Him.  Their  faith  is 
their  assurance  that  God's  saving  power  is  there,  in 
Jesus,  for  the  relief  of  their  needs.  Such  faith  Jesus 
demands  as  the  condition  upon  which  God's  help  be- 
comes effective;  and  the  more  ardent  and  unqualified  it 
is  the  more  joyfully  is  it  welcomed.  The  faith  in  Christ 
which  is  illustrated  in  the  epistles  is  in  essence  the  same 
thing.  It  has  no  doubt  other  needs  and  blessings  in 
view  than  those  which  are  uppermost  in  the  synoptics, 
but  as  an  attitude  to  Jesus  it  is  identical  with  that  which 
is  there  called  by  the  same  name.  It  will  be  more  con- 
venient to  examine  this  subject  further  when  we  come  to 
look  at  the  self-revelation  of  Jesus  in  Mark,  for  there  the 
narratives  of  the  'mighty  works'  bring  it  to  the  front: 
but  it  seemed  worth  while  to  emphasise  here,  in  con- 
nexion with  a  miracle  recorded   in  the  oldest  evangelic 


228  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

source,  the  memorable  utterance  of  Jesus  in  which  He 
sets  the  seal  of  His  joyous  approbation  on  that  attitude 
of  the  soul  to  Himself  as  the  bearer  of  God's  saving 
power  in  which  the  Christian  religion  has  had  its  being 
from  the  first.  There  is  no  inconsistency  here  between 
the  Christian  consciousness  of  what  Jesus  is,  and  Jesus' 
consciousness  of  Himself. 

Jesus  and  John  the  Baptist 

(Matt,  ii2'19,  21  23'32,  Luke  7  l8-35) 

It  has  already  been  remarked  that  the  only  one  of  His 
contemporaries  who  made  a  strong  impression  upon 
Jesus  was  John  the  Baptist.  We  do  not  know  that  they 
ever  met  except  on  the  one  occasion  when  Jesus  was 
baptized  in  Jordan,  but  the  personality,  the  mission,  and 
the  method  of  John  were  much  in  Jesus'  mind.  He  not 
only  thought  much,  He  spoke  repeatedly  about  him. 
In  the  last  days  of  His  life  He  recalled  John  and  his 
ministry  to  the  Jewish  authorities  (Mark  n27S  Matt. 
2i23fL,  Luke  2olff),  and  according  to  the  fourth  gospel, 
where  John  is  particularly  prominent,  He  spent  some  of 
the  last  weeks  of  His  life  in  the  scenes  of  the  Baptist's 
early  ministry  (John  10 40).  On  different  occasions  He 
expressly  compared  or  contrasted  John  with  Himself, 
and  in  doing  so  revealed  with  peculiar  vividness  His 
sense  of  what  He  Himself  was,  and  of  the  relation  in 
which  He  stood  to  the  whole  work  of  God,  past  and  to 
come.  It  is  fortunate  that  the  record  of  this  has  been 
preserved  for  the  most  part  in  the  common  source  of 
Matthew  and  Luke  (Matt.  11 2'19,  Luke  718"35),  and  to 
this  we  shall  confine  ourselves  here. 

There  is  a  certain  amount  of  difference  in  the  his- 
torical introduction  to  the  words  of  Jesus,  but  both 
evangelists  tell  of  a  message  sent  by  the  Baptist,  and 
both  give  his  question  to   Jesus  in  precisely  the  same 


JESUS  AND  THE  BAPTIST  229 

terms:  'Art  Thou  the  Coming  One,  or  must  we  look  for 
another?'  The  message  was  sent  because  John  had 
heard  in  his  prison — according  to  Luke  through  his  own 
disciples — of  wonderful  works  wrought  by  Jesus.  For 
the  evangelists,  these  works  identified  Jesus  as  the 
promised  Messiah:  Matthew  calls  them  expressly  (ch. 
112)  'the  works  of  the  Christ.'  John's  attitude,  how- 
ever, is  doubtful.  It  has  become  almost  a  tradition  in  a 
certain  school  of  criticism  that  what  we  have  here  is  the 
dawning  in  John's  mind  for  the  first  time  of  the  idea  that 
Jesus  might  be  the  Messiah;  and  he  is  supposed  to  send 
to  Jesus  that  this  nascent  idea  may  be  confirmed  or 
corrected.  The  inference,  of  course,  would  be  that  the 
story  of  the  baptism — unless  John  were  completely  ex- 
cluded from  all  knowledge  of  what  it  involved — is  false; 
nothing  happened  at  that  early  date  to  make  John  look 
for  anything  remarkable  from  Jesus.  But  it  is  gratui- 
tous to  set  aside  the  gospel  tradition  on  such  dubious 
grounds.  John's  state  of  mind  is  surely  not  hard  to 
understand,  even  if  the  tradition  be  maintained.  What 
ever  his  hopes  or  expectations  of  Jesus  may  have  been, 
they  were  religious  hopes,  not  mathematical  certainties; 
they  belonged  to  faith,  and  faith  may  always  be  tried 
and  shaken.  John  had  had  much  to  shake  his  faith. 
The  Messiah  in  whom  be  believed  was  one  who  was 
pre-eminently  the  Judge:  when  He  came,  it  was  to 
punish  the  wicked,  and  especially  to  right  the  wronged. 
Could  Jesus  be  the  Coming  One  when  a  man  like  John 
lay  in  Herod's  dungeon  for  no  other  reason  than  that  he 
had  been  faithful  to  the  right?  If  Jesus  were  indeed  the 
Messiah,  would  it  not  be  the  very  first  demonstration  of 
His  Messiahship  He  gave,  that  He  would  come  and 
avenge  upon  Herod  the  wrongs  of  the  just  and  holy  man 
who  had  prepared  His  way?  It  is  not  the  voice  of 
dawning  faith,  but  the  appeal  of  disappointment  ready  to 


23o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

break  down  into  despair  that  is  heard  in  John's  question. 
And  that  this  is  so  is  confirmed  by  the  significant  words 
with  which  the  direct  answer  of  Jesus  closes:  Blessed  is 
he  whosoever  shall  not  be  offended  in  Me.  This  answer 
undoubtedly  has  in  it  a  note  of  warning.  But  a  note  of 
warning  is  only  appropriate  on  the  evangelic,  not  on  the 
so-called  critical,  view  of  the  situation.  Jesus  would  not 
snub  nascent  faith  by  unprovoked  severity,  but  it  was 
necessary  for  Him  to  warn  even  one  whose  services  to 
God  had  been  so  distinguished  as  John's  against  stum- 
bling at  the  divine  as  it  was  represented  by  Himself. 
The  gospels  do  not  speak  of  any  one  as  being  offended 
in  Jesus  unless  He  has  first  felt  His  attraction.  It  is 
people  who  are  conscious  of  something  in  Jesus  which 
appeals  to  them,  and  who  go  with  Him  a  certain  length, 
but  then  encounter  something  in  Him  which  they  cannot 
get  over,  who  are  represented  as  'offended.'  The  warn- 
ing involved  in  the  beatitude  is  appropriate  only  to  a 
person  thus  affected  or  in  danger  of  being  thus  affected 
to  Jesus;  in  other  words,  it  is  appropriate  to  John  as  a 
person  who  had  once  had  hopes  of  Jesus  which  his  own 
unfortunate  experiences,  in  spite  of  all  he  heard,  were 
making  it  difficult  for  him  to  sustain.  It  is  gratuitous, 
therefore,  to  say  that  the  narrative  invalidates  that  of  the 
baptism,  and  on  any  theory  whatever  of  the  spiritual 
history  of  John  it  throws  a  welcome  light  on  Jesus'  mind 
about  Himself. 

The  following  points  in  it  call  for  special  notice.  First, 
there  is  the  reference  of  Jesus  to  His  works.  'Go  and 
tell  John  the  things  ye  see  and  hear:  the  blind  receive 
their  sight  and  the  lame  walk,  the  lepers  are  cleansed 
and  the  deaf  hear,  the  dead  are  raised  and  the  poor  have 
the  gospel  preached  to  them.'  The  evangelists,  no  one 
doubts,  understood  this  literally,  but  it  is  another  critical 
tradition  that  it  must  be  taken  figuratively.     Perhaps  it 


JESUS   AND   THE   BAPTIST  231 

should  be  taken  both  ways,  but  it  is  to  be  taken  literally 
at  least.     In  Matt.  11 21"23,  which  with  its  parallel  in  Luke 
10  13  f-  goes  back  to  the  source  we  are  at  present  depend- 
ing on,  Jesus  speaks   twice   of    his  duvdfietg    or  mighty 
works,  and  it  is  impossible  to  question  that  these  are 
what  we  usually  speak  of  as  His  miracles.     Jesus  ap- 
pealed to  His  wonderful  works,  crowned  as  they  were 
by  the  preaching  of  glad  tidings  to  the  poor,  to  identify 
Him    as   the   Coming    One.     They   were   not,    perhaps, 
what  John  expected,  whose  imagination  was  filled  with 
the  axe  and  the  fan;  but  they  were  the  true  insignia  of  the 
Messiah.     It  is  with  the  sense  of  their  worth  that  Jesus 
adds,  And  blessed  is  he  whosoever  shall  not  be  offended 
in   Me.     This  sentence  may  be  easily  passed  by,  but 
there  is  not  a  word  in  the  gospel  which  reveals  more 
clearly   the   solitary   place   of   Jesus.     It   stands   on   the 
same    plane    with    those    wonderful    utterances    already 
considered  in  which  He  speaks  of  confessing  and  deny- 
ing Him  before  men,  of  hating  father  and  mother,  son 
and    daughter    for    His    sake.     Unemphatic    as    it    may 
appear,  it  makes  the  blessedness  of   men  depend  upon 
a  right  relation  to  Himself;  happy,  with  the  rare  and 
high  happiness  on  which  God  congratulates  man,  is  he 
who  is  not  at  fault  about  Jesus,  but  takes  Him  for  all 
that   in  His  own   consciousness  He   is.     That   Jesus   in 
this  informal  utterance  claims  to  be  the  Christ  is  un- 
questionable; or  if  'claims'  is  an  aggressive  word,  we  can 
only  correct  it  by  saying  that  He  speaks  as  the  Christ. 
That  is  the  character  which  He  bears  in  His  own  mind, 
and  in  the  consciousness  of  which  He  declares  Himself. 
He  is  6  ipxofievor,  and  He  is  there,  the  bearer  of  God's 
redeeming  love,  the  Person  through  whom  the  purpose 
of  God  is  to  be  achieved  and  His  promises  fulfilled.     We 
do  not  need  to  raise  any  such  technical  question  as,  What 
precisely  is  meant  by  calling   Jesus  the  Christ?     It  is 


232  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

not  by  studying  Messianic  dogmatic  that  we  learn  to 
understand  the  gospels,  it  is  in  the  words  and  deeds  of 
Jesus  that  we  find  the  material  for  filling  with  their 
proper  meaning  this  and  all  other  titles  which  are  ap- 
plied to  Him.  But  taking  this  simple  sentence  in  its 
simplicity  we  do  not  hesitate  to  say  of  it,  as  of  Matt. 
io32,  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  fourth  gospel  which 
transcends  it.  The  attitude  which  it  so  calmly  and  sove- 
reignly assumes  to  men,  the  attitude  which  it  as  calmly 
and  sovereignly  demands  from  men — even  from  men  so 
great  as  John  the  Baptist — is  precisely  the  attitude  of 
Christians  to  their  Lord  in  the  most  '  Christian '  parts 
of  the  New  Testament.  It  is  not  they  who  gratuitously, 
and  under  mistaken  ideas  of  what  He  is,  put  Him  into  a 
place  which  no  human  being  ought  to  give  to  another; 
but  He  Himself  from  the  very  beginning  spontaneously 
assumes  this  place  as  His.  The  Christian  faith  in 
Christ,  which  the  New  Testament  exhibits  throughout, 
would  be  justified  by  this  one  word  even  if  it  stood  alone. 
But  it  does  not  stand  alone  even  in  this  passage.  The 
word  of  warning  spoken  by  Jesus  might  have  seemed  to 
those  who  heard  it  to  reflect  upon  the  character  of  the 
Baptist,  but  the  moment  the  messengers  are  gone  Jesus 
breaks  into  a  striking  panegyric  upon  John.1  He  is  not 
a  reed  shaken  with  the  wind — a  weak  and  inconstant 
nature.  He  is  not  clothed  in  soft  raiment,  with  a  silken 
tunic  under  his  camel's  hair — a  man  making  his  own 
privately  out  of  a  pretended  divine  mission.  He  is  a 
prophet,  yes,  and  far  more  than  a  prophet.  The  prophets 
had  their  place  in  the  carrying  out  of  God's  gracious 
purpose  towards  men,  but  this  man's  place  excelled 
theirs.  Both  Matthew  and  Luke,  and  no  doubt  therefore 
their  source,  explain  this  by  applying  to  John  the  pro- 

1  It  may  be  that  all  that  is  here  reported  does  not  belong  to  the  present 
or  to  any  one  occasion,  but  this  is  immaterial. 


JESUS  AND  THE   BAPTIST  233 

phecy  of  Malachi  (3  *) :  '  Behold  I  send  my  messenger 
before  thy  face  who  shall  prepare  thy  way  before  thee.y 
It  must  be  admitted  that  it  is  very  difficult  to  suppose 
that  these  are  the  words  of  Jesus.  In  the  Old  Testa- 
ment it  is  Israel  which  is  addressed,  and  God  speaks 
throughout  in  the  first  person:  'Behold  I  send  My 
messenger,  and  he  shall  prepare  the  way  before  Me;  and 
the  Lord,  whom  ye  seek,  will  suddenly  come  to  His 
temple;  and  the  messenger  of  the  covenant,  whom  ye 
desire,  behold,  he  cometh,  saith  Jehovah  of  hosts.'  The 
Septuagint  variations  do  not  affect  the  character  of 
the  passage  in  this  respect.  But  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, both  here  and  in  Mark  1 2,  it  is  not  Israel  which  is 
addressed,  but  the  Messiah  (notice  the  change  of  before 
Me  into  before  thee);  and  the  messenger  prepares  the 
way  for  the  Messiah,  not,  as  in  Malachi,  for  God.  It 
may  be,  as  Zahn  argues,1  that  the  disciples  would  never 
have  ventured  on  this  modification  of  the  prophecy  un- 
less Jesus  had  applied  to  Himself  what  is  said  of  the 
earnestly  expected  Lord,  the  Mediator  of  the  Covenant, 
in  Malachi,  but  of  this  we  cannot  be  sure.  What  is 
indubitable  is  the  solemn  asseveration  of  Jesus  which 
follows:  'There  hath  not  arisen  among  them  that  are 
born  of  women  a  greater  than  John  the  Baptist,  but 
he  that  is  least  in  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  greater  than 
he.'  It  does  not  matter  whether  the  greatness  of  John 
is  conceived  as  that  of  official  dignity  or  that  of  personal 
character;  he  had  both.  He  had  an  incomparably  high 
vocation  as  the  immediate  messenger  of  the  Kingdom, 
and  his  personality  was  equal  to  it.  What  does  matter 
is  that  there  is  a  still  higher  greatness  than  John's  which 
belongs  even  to  the  least  in  the  Kingdom.  It  is  im- 
possible to  suppose  that  Jesus  here  thinks  of  the  King- 
dom as  purely  transcendent,  and  means  that  whoever 

1  Commentary  on  Matthew,  ad  he. 


234  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

finds  an  inheritance  in  it  when  it  comes — all  its  future 
citizens — will  stand  on  a  higher  plane  than  John.  The 
fiuporepos,  of  whom  he  speaks  in  the  passage,  is  only 
the  most  typical  example  of  the  fiixpoi,  or  little  ones,  to 
whom  he  refers  so  often.  Taking  them  as  a  body, 
the  citizens  of  the  Kingdom  as  Jesus  knows  them  are 
insignificant  people — 'these  little  ones,'  or  'these  little 
ones  who  believe';  but  the  cause  with  which  they  are 
identified  makes  them  partakers  in  its  incomparable 
greatness.  He  asserts  this  in  all  kinds  of  indirect  ways. 
The  smallest  service  done  to  them  is  registered  and 
repaid:  Whosoever  shall  give  to  drink  to  one  of  these 
little  ones  a  cup  of  cold  water  only,  in  the  name  of  a 
disciple,  verily  I  say  unto  you,  He  shall  in  no  wise  lose 
his  reward  (Matt.  io42).  The  most  terrible  indig- 
nation flames  out  against  those  who  lead  them  astray: 
Whosoever  shall  offend  one  of  these  little  ones  which 
believe  (on  Me),  it  were  better  for  him  that  a  great  mill- 
stone were  hanged  about  his  neck,  and  that  he  were 
drowned  in  the  depth  of  the  sea  (Matt.  186).  The  most 
wonderful  privileges  are  asserted  for  them:  Take  heed 
that  ye  despise  not  one  of  these  little  ones;  for  I  say  unto 
you,  that  in  heaven  their  angels  do  always  behold  the 
face  of  My  Father  which  is  in  heaven — that  is,  they  have 
immediate  and  unimpeded  access  to  plead  their  cause 
with  the  Highest.  The  greatness  of  the  little  ones  is 
a  familiar  thought  with  Jesus,  illustrated  in  these  and 
other  ways,  and  it  is  only  put  with  startling  boldness 
when  He  declares  that  the  most  insignificant  of  them  all  is 
greater  than  John.  But  the  only  difference  was  that  for 
the  little  ones  Jesus  and  the  Kingdom  were  realities 
which  interpenetrated;  all  their  hopes  of  the  Kingdom 
were  hopes  to  be  realised  through  Him;  whereas  John, 
when  this  word  was  spoken,  stood  looking  toward  Jesus 
indeed,  but  with  a  look  critical  and  perplexed.     No  one 


JESUS  AND   THE   BAPTIST  235 

who  takes  this  attitude  to  Jesus  knows  or  can  know  the 
supreme  good  which  God  bestows  upon  man;  whatever 
his  eminence  in  other  respects — in  ability,  in  public 
service,  in  native  capacity  for  the  spiritual  life — the 
most  insignificant  disciple  of  Jesus  stands  on  a  higher 
plane.  There  is  no  formal  'claim'  made  here,  but  there 
is  the  revelation,  on  the  part  of  Jesus,  of  a  consciousness 
in  relation  to  God  and  humanity  in  which  He  stands 
absolutely  alone. 

The  same  consciousness  is  implied  also  in  the  difficult 
saying  which  follows  immediately  in  Matthew  (n12f), 
and  which  Luke  gives  in  a  considerably  different  form  in 
another  connexion  (16  16).  The  difficulties  hardly  con- 
cern us  here,  and,  fortunately,  the  one  point  which  is 
perfectly  clear  is  that  which  does  concern  us,  namely, 
the  consciousness  of  Jesus  that  with  the  ministry  of  John 
a  new  religious  era  had  dawned.  Up  till  now  it  had 
been  the  reign  of  the  law  and  the  prophets,  an  age  of 
preparation  and  expectation,  during  which  men  could 
live  the  life  of  obedient  routine,  and  wait  for  God  to 
fulfil  the  hopes  He  had  inspired.  But  with  the  appear- 
ance of  John  that  more  tranquil  age  had  come  to  an  end; 
men  lived  and  they  knew  it,  at  a  religious  crisis;  a  situa- 
tion had  emerged  which  called  for  instant  and  decisive 
action.  It  is  within  this  situation  we  have  to  inter- 
pret the  difficult  words  i]  fiaaihia  rwv  oupavtbv  fiid'erai  xai 
Ptaarai  dpitdZoufftv  abrrjv]  but  whether  they  mean  that 
the  Kingdom  comes  in  like  a  whirlwind,  and  that  violent 
men  like  the  Zealots  wish  to  bring  it  in  so;  or  that  at 
any  cost  of  violence  to  themselves  genuine  disciples 
make  good  their  share  in  it;  or  that  it  is  invaded  by 
aggressive  publicans  and  sinners  who  (as  decent  people 
think)  have  no  right  to  be  there,  is  irrelevant  to  our  pur- 
pose. What  it  concerns  us  to  note  is  simply  Jesus' 
consciousness  of  the  new  age.     It  dates  from  John,  but 


236  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

it  is  not  identified  with  him.  John,  if  their  contempo- 
raries will  only  believe  it,  is  the  promised  Elijah,  who  is  to 
precede  the  end  (Mai.  45,  Matt,  n  ").  Who  can  Jesus 
be,  when  no  one  less  than  Elijah  must  come  to  prepare 
His  way  ? 

The  passage  in  which  Matthew  (n  16ff)  and  Luke  (73lff) 
record  the  verdict  of  Jesus  on  His  contemporaries — a 
passage  in  which  Jesus  deliberately  contrasts  Himself  and 
His  forerunner — is  reserved  till  we  come  to  consider  the 
title  Son  of  Man,  which  occurs  in  both  writers  at  this 
point:  meanwhile  we  proceed  to  examine  what  is  in 
some  ways  a  critically  important  section  in  the  gospels, 
Matt,  ii  25"27  with  the  parallel  in  Luke  io21"22. 

The  Great  Thanksgiving  of  Jesus 

(Matt,  ii  25-27,  Luke  10  21  £-) 

This  passage  is  not  found  in  the  same  connexion  in 
the  two  evangelists,  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  stood 
in  the  source  common  to  both.  Luke  attaches  it  to  the 
return  of  the  Seventy,  and  to  their  report  of  their  success. 
'In  that  same  hour  he  rejoiced  in  the  Holy  Spirit.'  To 
Luke  it  is  an  utterance  of  pure  joy — '  uncompounded 
emotion.'  It  may  be  questioned  whether  this  does  justice 
to  the  words  of  Jesus.  There  is  something  more  subtle 
in  the  placing  of  the  words  by  Matthew,  who  also  intro- 
duces them  by  'at  that  time.'  The  time  in  Matthew 
is  that  at  which  Jesus  has  been  sending  His  warning 
beatitude  to  John,  passing  a  scornful  censure  on  the 
childishness  of  his  contemporaries  in  their  dealings  with 
God  and  His  messengers,  and  pronouncing  woes  on  the 
Galikean  cities  which  had  seen  His  mighty  works  and 
not  repented.  'At  that  time  Jesus  answered  and  said,  I 
thank  Thee,  O  Father,  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,  that 
Thou  didst  hide  these  things  from  the  wise  and  under- 


THE  GREAT  THANKSGIVING  237 

standing,  and  didst  reveal  them  unto  babes.  Yea, 
Father,  for  so  it  was  well  pleasing  in  Thy  sight.'  The 
eleventh  chapter  of  Matthew  as  a  whole  might  be  headed 
ffxdvdalov,  Offence:  it  is  engaged  throughout  with  peo- 
ple who  found  things  in  Jesus  which  they  could  not 
get  over,  and  therefore  with  the  disappointing  side  of 
His  experience.  It  is  a  question  of  profound  interest, 
how  Jesus  Himself  regarded  such  disappointments,  and 
the  evangelist  finds  the  answer  to  it  in  the  first  part 
of  the  great  thanksgiving.  When  Jesus  reflects  on  His 
work  and  its  issues,  disenchanting  in  some  respects  as 
they  are,  what  is  uppermost  in  His  mind  is  recognition 
of  God's  fatherly  providence,  and  unreserved  and  joyful 
surrender  to  it.  The  words  'revealed'  and  'hidden' 
show  that  He  is  thinking  mainly  of  His  teaching.  It  is 
only  the  peculiarity  of  an  Eastern  language  that  makes 
Him  seem  to  give  thanks  that  some  have  rejected  it:  in 
our  idiom  He  would  have  said,  'That  while  Thou  hast 
hidden  these  things  from  the  wise  and  understanding, 
Thou  hast  revealed  them  unto  babes.'  Jesus  could  not 
have  rejoiced  in  a  revelation  which  was  only  accessible 
to  the  wise  and  understanding;  this  would  have  excluded 
the  babes.  But  a  revelation  accessible  to  the  babes  is 
accessible  to  all;  even  the  wise  and  understanding  may 
apprehend  it  if  they  are  willing  to  lay  aside  their  pre- 
tensions and  become  as  little  children.  Jesus  is  content, 
and  more  than  content,  to  have  it  so.  He  acquiesces 
with  joy  in  the  ordering  of  His  life  and  work  upon  such 
lines.  It  is  the  gracious  will  of  the  Father,  the  Sove- 
reign Lord  of  heaven  and  earth;  what  should  one  who  calls 
God  Father  do  but  accept  it  with  serene  confidence  ? 

If  the  words  of  Jesus  stopped  here,  we  might  not  be 
able  to  bring  them  into  any  precise  relation  to  our  subject. 
They  are  such  words  as  any  child  of  God  might  use  who 
encountered  untoward  experiences  in  doing  the  will  of 


238  JESUS   AND   THE    GOSPEL 

his  Father.  But  Jesus  goes  much  further.  The  God- 
ward  i£opLol6y7}ffts  or  thanksgiving,  the  joyful  acqui- 
escence in  the  Father's  will,  is  followed  by  a  manward 
expression  of  assurance.  The  results  of  His  work  so 
far  may  seem  disconcerting,  but  they  do  not  cast  Him 
down.  He  has  an  inward  confidence  that  He  is  com- 
petent for  the  work  the  Father  has  given  Him  to  do, 
and  that  He  alone  is  competent.  This  is  what  is  repre- 
sented in  the  words  of  Matthew  (n27):  All  things  have 
been  delivered  unto  Me  of  My  Father:  and  no  one 
knoweth  the  Son,  save  the  Father;  neither  doth  any 
know  the  Father,  save  the  Son,  and  he  to  whomsoever 
the  Son  willeth  to  reveal  Him.  The  variations  in  Luke 
are  immaterial,  and  before  referring  to  what  many  regard 
as  an  earlier  tradition  of  this  saying,  substantially  differ- 
ent in  import,  it  will  be  worth  while  to  consider  what 
the  received  text  means.  The  following  points  are  to 
be  noticed. 

First,  the  declaration  'all  things  have  been  delivered 
unto  me  by  My  Father '  is  to  be  interpreted  in  relation  to 
the  context.  'All  things'  does  not  refer  to  universal 
sovereignty,  as  when  Jesus  after  the  resurrection  says, 
All  power  has  been  given  unto  Me  in  heaven  and  on 
earth  (Matt  2&x%).  This  is  not  relevant  here,  nor  is 
there  any  analog)7  to  it  till  Jesus  is  glorified.  Neither 
does  it  express,  as  has  been  suggested,  the  Christian 
confidence  declared  in  Paul's  words,  'All  things  are  yours' 
(i  Cor.  3  21),  or,  'We  know  that  all  things  work  together 
for  good  to  them  that  love  God'  (Rom.  828).  Standing 
where  it  does,  'all  things'  must  mean  all  that  is  involved 
in  the  revelation  of  God  to  man — the  whole  contents 
and  administration  of  this  revelation.  This  is  what  is  in 
view  both  in  what  precedes  and  in  what  follows.  In  the 
work  of  making  Himself  known  to  men,  the  Father  has 
no  organ  but   Jesus,  and   in   Jesus   He  has  an  adequate 


THE   GREAT  THANKSGIVING  239 

organ.  The  word  *aped60q  is  supposed  by  many — 
Wellhausen  among  the  latest — to  allude  to  -apddo<7:,.  or 
tradition,  all  religious  knowledge  among  the  Jews  com- 
ing under  this  description.  The  tradition  of  the  Jewish 
schools,  on  which  the  wise  and  understanding  leaned 
so  confidently.  Jesus  brushed  aside;  the  tradition  which 
He  Himself  represented  was  immediately  due  to  God. 
It  is  plausible  rather  than  convincing  to  deduce  so  much 
from  the  term  xaped60q,  but  discounting  the  possi- 
ble associations  of  the  word,  two  things  are  clear.  One 
is  that  Jesus  strongly  asserts  here,  as  He  is  often  rep- 
resented doing  in  the  fourth  gospel,  His  subordination 
to  the  Father.  He  has  nothing  that  He  has  not  re- 
ceived. His  doctrine  is  not  His  own,  but  His  who  sent 
Him.  The  other  is  that  there  is  no  limit  to  what  He 
has  received.  The  Father  loves  the  Son  and  shows  Him 
all  things  that  He  Himself  is  doing  (John  5  20). 

The  second  point  that  calls  for  notice  is  the  correla- 
tion of  the  Father  and  the  Son.  Both  the  words  are 
used  absolutely:  as  there  is  only  one  Person  who  can  be 
called  the  Father,  so  there  is  only  one  who  can  be  called 
the  Son.  The  same  phenomenon  recurs  in  Mark  13  B: 
But  of  that  day  or  hour  knoweth  no  one,  not  even  the 
angels  in  heaven,  neither  the  Son,  but  the  Father.  It  is 
surely  remarkable  to  find  the  credibility  of  this  disputed. 
Schmiedel,  indeed,  whose  treatment  of  the  words  before 
us  will  be  considered  presently,  makes  the  passage  in 
Mark  one  of  the  five  foundation  pillars  for  a  purely 
historical  account  of  Jesus,  but  Loisy  is  embarrassed  by 
both.1  '.Although  Father  and  Son,'  he  writes,  'are  not 
exclusively  metaphysical  terms' — in  which  case  it  would 
have  been  easy  to  discard  them — 'and  although  they 
here  represent  God  and  Christ,  the  use  of  the  word  Son 
simplkiter   is   extraordinary7   in   the   mouth   of   Jesus;   it 

1  Les  Evangiles  Synoptiques,  i.  909. 


24o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

belongs  to  the  language  of  tradition,  not  to  that  of  the 
Saviour;  the  Christ  it  designates  is  immortal,  we  may 
even  say  eternal. '  He  refers  in  a  note  to  the  fact  that 
the  same  use  of  Son  is  found  again  in  Mark,  but  adds, 
'there  also  one  may  think  of  a  gloss  of  tradition,  or  of 
the  evangelist.'  Thought  is  free,  and  one  may  think  of 
anything  he  likes,  but  surely  it  is  arbitrary  in  the  highest 
degree  to  set  aside  the  testimony  of  our  two  oldest 
sources  to  what  they  evidently  regarded  as  peculiarly 
solemn  and  important  utterances  of  Jesus  on  the  ground 
that  the  language  they  use  belongs  to  tradition,  not  to 
the  Saviour.  What  do  we  know  of  tradition,  how  can 
we  form  any  idea  at  all  of  its  language,  except  on  the 
basis  of  the  evidence  which  is  here  summarily  set  aside? 
Of  course  if  one  has  made  up  his  mind  beforehand  that 
no  sane  and  pious  person  could  ever  speak  of  God  and 
Himself  as  the  Father  and  the  Son,  and  that  therefore 
such  language  could  not  have  been  used  by  Jesus,  his 
way  is  clear;  but  it  is  clear  also  that  he  is  measuring 
Jesus,  and  Jesus'  consciousness  of  God  and  Himself,  by 
antecedent  convictions  about  men  in  general,  and  not  by 
the  evidence  in  our  hands  regarding  this  wonderful  Man. 
If  we  knew  nothing  whatever  about  Jesus  apart  from 
this  utterance  it  might  well  seem  staggering,  but  we 
cannot  forget  as  we  read  it  all  that  we  have  already 
passed  in  review.  The  mind  of  Jesus  on  His  own  re- 
lations to  God  and  to  humanity  is  not,  as  we  have  seen 
abundant  reason  to  believe,  to  be  judged  by  that  of 
other  men;  there  is  in  it  not  only  something  which  iden- 
tifies Him  with  us,  but  something  also,  coming  out 
in  innumerable  ways,  which  profoundly  differentiates 
Him  from  us;  and  that  mysterious  something  is  con- 
spicuous here.  To  sum  up  the  whole  passage,  Matt, 
xi.  2r,3°,  as  Loisy  does  ! — Cantique  de  sagesse  chretienne, 

1  Ut  supra,  p.  910. 


THE   GREAT  THANKSGIVING  241 

fruit  de  V Esprit — is  to  shut  one's  eyes  to  the  Jesus  who 
is  visible  throughout  the  gospels  because  one's  mind 
is  full  of  another  Jesus  who  cannot  be  discovered  in 
the  gospels  at  all. 

This  unqualified  correlation  of  the  Father  and  the 
Son  is  the  ultimate  ground  on  which  Jesus  holds  the 
place  which  He  does  in  New  Testament  faith,  and  un- 
less we  can  set  aside  the  words  in  which  He  expresses 
it  we  must  acknowledge  that  that  place  is  justified.  It 
is  not  only  given,  it  is  assumed.  It  answers  to  His  own, 
as  well  as  to  the  Christian,  sense  of  what  is  due  to  Jesus: 
the  Person  on  whom  Christianity  depends  is  in  his  own 
consciousness  adequate  to  the  responsibility. 

Finally,  however,  this  is  brought  out  with  new  em- 
phasis in  the  words  which  follow:  'No  one  knoweth 
the  Son  save  the  Father;  neither  doth  any  know  the 
Father,  save  the  Son,  and  he  to  whomsoever  the  Son 
willeth  to  reveal  Him.'  What  stands  on  the  very  sur- 
face here  is  the  mutual,  perfect,  and  exclusive  know- 
ledge of  the  Father  and  the  Son.  When  Jesus  says 
that  no  one  knows  the  Son  but  the  Father,  we  cannot 
suppose  Him  to  be  merely  saying  of  Himself  what  is 
true  of  every  one,  that  there  is  a  mystery  in  individ- 
uality which  is  open  to  God  alone;  assuming  that  He 
spoke  the  words  at  all,  they  are  relevant  and  consist- 
ent with  the  context  only  if  they  suggest  a  unique  and 
unfathomable  greatness  in  Jesus.  It  is  easier  to  see 
the  point  of  what  comes  after:  Neither  doth  any  know 
the  Father  save  the  Son,  and  he  to  whomsoever  the 
Son  willeth  to  reveal  Him.  Jesus  declares  explicitly 
that  He  alone  knows  God  as  Father,  and  that  for  that 
knowledge,  on  which  blessedness  depends,  all  men  must 
become  debtors  to  Him.  It  is  through  Him  alone,  and 
in  accordance  with  His  sovereign  and  gracious  will,  that 
the  Father  is  revealed,  and  that  men  can  be  enlightened 
16 


242  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

and  saved.  It  is  possible  to  read  the  passage  as  it  stands 
in  too  abstract  and  metaphysical  a  sense — to  forget 
that  Father  and  Son,  even  when  used  thus  absolutely, 
are  terms  full  of  ethical  import;  but  it  is  a  mistake  to 
suppose  that  we  do  justice  to  an  utterance  so  striking 
when  we  have  reduced  it  to  moral  commonplace.  No 
doubt  we  may  say  with  Loisy,  that  no  one  fully  knows 
the  Son  and  the  devotion  that  binds  Him  to  man's  re- 
demption, except  the  Father  who  sends  Him;  and  that 
no  one  knows  the  Father  and  the  indulgent  goodness 
with  which  He  follows  His  creatures,  except  the  Son 
and  those  who  have  been  taught  by  Him;  but  as  he 
himself  allows  (though  he  makes  it  an  argument  that 
it  is  not  really  Jesus  who  speaks),  the  terms  Father 
and  Son,  in  absolute  correlation,  as  here,  suggest  some- 
thing more.  The  sentence  as  a  whole  tells  us  plainly 
that  Jesus  is  both  to  God  and  to  man  what  no  other  can 
be:  He  is  the  Son  who  alone  knows  the  Father — to 
borrow  the  expression  of  the  fourth  gospel,  He  is  the 
old?  owrevrjs— and  He  is  the  Mediator  through  whom 
alone  the  knowledge  of  the  Father  comes  to  men.  There 
is  nothing  in  the  New  Testament  which  carries  us  fur- 
ther than  this,  and  nothing  more  is  wanted  to  justify 
completely  the  attitude  of  Christian  faith  to  Jesus.  It 
is  a  signal  instance  of  a  question-begging  term  when 
Loisy  says  that  the  passage  translates  the  faith  of  the 
Christian  community.  It  corresponds  to  it,  yet  does  not 
translate  it.  But  for  words  like  these,  and  the  reality 
which  stands  behind  them,  the  faith  of  the  Christian 
community  could  never  have  come  into  being,  or  been 
able  to  justify  itself  to  its  own  judgment. 

Criticism  of  this  passage  has  seldom  gone  to  the  ex- 
treme represented  by  Loisy,  who  refuses  to  allow  that 
it  has  any  historical  connexion  with  Jesus  whatever. 
But  in  recent  times  an  attempt  has  been  made  to  dis- 


THE   GREAT  THANKSGIVING  243 

count  its  importance  by  literary  as  opposed  to  historical 
considerations.  It  was  apparently  current  in  the  sec- 
ond century  in  a  somewhat  different  form.  On  the  one 
hand,  the  present  tense  (iirt/tvdffxet)  was  replaced  by 
the  aorist  (fyvw);  and  on  the  other,  the  order  of  the 
clauses  was  reversed.  It  might  then  be  rendered:  No 
one  has  come  to  know  the  Father  but  the  Son,  nor  has 
any  one  come  to  know  the  Son  but  the  Father,  and  they 
(or  he)  to  whomsoever  the  Son  has  made  (or,  willeth 
to  make)  the  revelation.1  The  doctrinal  importance 
of  these  changes  is  supposed  to  be  very  great,  and  has 
been  strongly  urged,  for  example,  by  Schmiedel.2  The 
change  of  tense  is  alleged  to  bring  the  whole  utterance 
down  from  the  timeless  or  eternal  into  the  historical 
world,  and  the  affinity  of  this  passage  with  the  fourth 
gospel  disappears.  At  the  time  at  which  Jesus  speaks, 
He  has  attained  to  the  knowledge  that  God  is  not  a 
Lord  inaccessible  to  men  and  always  in  a  heat  about 
His  honour,  but  a  loving  Father.  But  Jesus  is  the 
only  person  who  has  yet  attained  to  this  insight.  Hav- 
ing it,  it  is  natural  for  Him  to  think  of  Himself  as  God's 
Son,  and  so  He  does  think  of  Himself;  but  none  of  His 
hearers  has  penetrated  His  secret.  God  alone  knows, 
or  rather  has  perceived — because  the  spiritual  history 
of  Jesus  has  given  Him  the  opportunity  of  perceiving 

1  This  is  the  'Western'  reading  as  given  e.g.  in  Huck's  Synopse  on  the 
basis  of  Marcion,  Justin,  and  the  Clementine  Homilies:  ovdele  eyvu  tov 
Trarepa,  el  jitj  6  vibe,  mi  (ovde)  tov  vlbv  el  fii}  6  7ra,TT/p  ml  ole  (J)  av  6  vide 
airom'kvipri  (flovXijTat  anom'Avipai).  Harnack  in  his  attempted  restoration  of 
Q  (Spruche  u.  Reden  Jesu,  94,  189  ff.)  adopts  the  change  of  tense,  but  not 
that  of  order.  He  is  inclined  to  agree  with  Wellhausen  that  the  clause  '  no 
one  knows  the  Son  but  the  Father'  is  an  old  interpolation:  the  variation 
of  position  itself  makes  it  suspicious,  and  as  we  have  seen  above  its  rele- 
vance is  not  so  obvious.  Harnack's  text  runs:  Trdvra  fioi  napefidflr/  vtto  tov 
7rarp<5c,  ml  ovihle  eyvu  [tov  vlbv  el  /ufj  6  ttott/p  ovde]  tov  TraTepa  [Tie  eyvcS] 
el  firj  6  vlbgml  u  hav  ftov/.qTai  6  vibe  airomyvipat.  For  Weiss's  view,  which 
is  more  favourable  to  the  received  text,  v.  Die  Quellen  der  synopt.  UeberL 

3°' 

2  Das  vierte  Evangelium,  48  ff . 


244  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

— that  Jesus'  attitude  to  Him  is  that  of  son  to  father. 
The  change  of  order,  too,  is  important.  In  the  re- 
ceived text,  what  immediately  precedes  the  last  clause 
is  the  assertion  that  no  one  knows  the  Father  but  the 
Son,  and  when  it  is  added,  'and  he  to  whomsoever  the 
Son  willeth  to  reveal,'  the  object  naturally  supplied 
is  'the  Father,'  or  'the  true  nature  of  God.'  But  in 
the  more  ancient  text,  what  immediately  precedes  the 
last  clause  is,  No  one  knows  the  Son  but  the  Father, 
and  to  this  the  natural  supplement  can  only  be,  'and 
they  (or  he)  to  whom  the  Son  reveals  Himself.'  It  is  as 
if  Jesus  had  said  to  His  hearers,  'None  of  you  has  yet 
recognised  me:  I  have  to  tell  you  Myself  what  I  am.' 
It  is  not  the  Father  whom  He  reveals,  but  the  Son. 

The  importance  of  this,  allowing  to  the  'Western' 
text  any  authority  it  can  legitimately  claim,  is  much 
more  apparent  than  real.  To  refer  first  to  the  difference 
of  order:  it  is  certain  that  every  one  who  often  quotes 
this  utterance  of  Jesus  quotes  it  with  the  clauses  some- 
times in  one  order,  sometimes  in  the  other.  Irenaeus, 
who  censures  those  who  adopt  the  'Western'  order  as 
people  who  want  to  be  wiser  than  the  apostles,  some- 
times follows  it  himself;  which  proves,  not  that  it  stood 
in  his  New  Testament,  but  that,  like  other  people  in 
ancient  and  modern  times,  Irenaeus  could  recall  the 
passage  without  attaching  any  significance  to  the  order.1 
Then  as  to  the  tense:  is  it  quite  certain  that  there  is  the 
difference  which  Schmiedel  supposes  between  the  aorist 
and  the  present?  Even  those  who  read  Zyvu)  in  their 
text  must  have  felt  that  it  included  a  present — a  his- 
torical if  not  a  timeless  one;  at  the  moment  at  which 
the  words  were  spoken  Jesus  and  the  Father  had  the 
peculiar,  mutual,  and  exclusive  knowledge  of  each  other 
which  is  asserted  also  in  the  received  text.     If  this  is  so, 

1  Irenaeus,  Adv.  Haer.,  iv.  6.  2. 


THE   GREAT  THANKSGIVING  245 

nothing  is  gained  for  Schmiedel's  interpretation  by 
saying  that  what  Jesus  revealed  was  not  the  Father  but 
Himself.  He  Himself  was  Son,  and  as  the  knowledge 
of  relatives  is  one,  to  reveal  Himself  is  to  reveal  the 
Father.  It  is  difficult  to  understand  why  a  writer  who 
not  only  accepts  as  certain,  but  presents  as  the  very 
type  of  certainty,  the  passage  in  Mark  13  32  in  which 
there  is  an  absolute  correlation  of  the  Father  and  the 
Son,  should  so  strenuously  object  to  it  here,  and  argue 
that  Jesus  cannot  have  called  Himself  Son  of  God  in  a 
sense  applicable  to  Himself  alone.  If  He  did  it  there, 
why  not  here?  To  avoid  all  misunderstanding,  Schmie- 
del  says,  we  must  state  as  the  import  of  the  passage  not 
that  Jesus  was  conscious  of  Himself  as  the  Son  of  God, 
but  that  He  was  conscious  of  Himself  as  a  child  of  God. 
That  is,  we  must  decline  the  only  expression  which  is 
known  to  the  New  Testament,  and  adopt  an  expression 
of  which  the  New  Testament  does  not  furnish  a  single 
example.  We  must  set  the  whole  of  the  evidence  aside, 
and  construct  the  consciousness  of  Jesus  out  of  our  own 
heads.  It  is  impossible  to  regard  this  as  serious  criticism. 
There  is  one  consideration  which  of  itself  is  conclusive 
against  all  minimising  constructions  of  this  passage.  It 
is  contained  in  the  words,  All  things  have  been  delivered 
unto  Me  by  My  Father.  (Harnack  thinks  the  original 
was  'by  the  Father';  but  it  makes  no  difference.)  These 
words  are  surely  not  the  preface  to  such  a  rational- 
istic commonplace  as  Schmiedel  evolves  from  what 
comes  after;  they  imply  in  Jesus  a  consciousness  of 
His  place  and  vocation  to  which  nothing  but  the  Chris- 
tian attitude  to  Him  does  justice.  It  is  vain  to  isolate 
words  like  these  about  the  Father  and  the  Son,  and 
then  to  torture  them  into  agreement  with  some  pre- 
conceived idea  of  what  Jesus  must  have  been:  they 
do  not  stand  alone  in  our  evidence,  and  when  we  take 


246  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

them  with  utterances  of  Jesus  such  as  have  been  al- 
ready examined  they  refuse  to  accept  any  but  the  highest 
interpretation.  There  may  be  theories  of  man  and 
the  universe  which  have  antecedent  antipathies  to  them; 
but  it  is  no  objection  to  them,  in  the  eyes  of  a  student 
of  history,  that  they  furnish  a  historical  justification 
for  the  Christian  faith  in  Jesus.  It  may  not  be  amiss, 
however,  to  remark  that  while  we  accept  this  justi- 
fication, we  admit  that  it  is  idle  to  ask  whether  the  Son- 
ship  of  Jesus  here  spoken  of  is  Messianic  or  ethical 
or  metaphysical.  We  gain  nothing  by  separating  in 
thought  what  cannot  be  separated  in  reality.  That 
Jesus  was  conscious  of  a  unique  vocation  in  connexion 
with  God's  Kingdom  is  true:  in  that  sense  He  was  the 
Messianic  Son  of  God,  and  the  passage  illustrates  His 
Messianic  consciousness.  But  the  relation  to  God 
which  this  involved  was  not  'official';  even  in  His  Mes- 
sianic vocation  His  consciousness  was  filial;  the  God 
whose  kingdom  He  was  to  inaugurate  was  His  Father 
in  a  vital  and  ethical  sense — One  with  whom  He  lived 
in  perfect  mutual  understanding,  who  was  loved  and 
trusted  by  Him  without  reserve,  and  to  whom  He  could 
say  in  the  most  disconcerting  situations,  Even  so,  Father, 
for  so  it  seemed  good  in  Thy  sight.  The  least  ser- 
viceable, however,  of  all  these  distinctions  is  meta- 
physical. It  means  something  when  we  say  that  Jesus 
was  Messianic  Son  of  God — we  can  put  into  the  ad- 
jective all  we  know  of  His  vocation  in  God's  Kingdom. 
It  means  something  when  we  say  He  was  Son  of  God 
in  the  ethical  sense:  we  can  fill  up  the  idea  of  Sonship 
with  the  love,  trust,  and  obedience  which  belong  to  the 
filial  life.  But  it  does  not  mean  anything  which  we  can 
correspondingly  define  if  we  say  He  was  Son  in  the 
metaphysical  sense.  It  is  only  another  way  of  saying 
with  emphasis  that  He  was  Son,  and  of  suggesting  that 


ISOLATED   REVELATIONS  247 

there   was   something   in   His   Sonship   which   goes   be- 
yond us. 

Isolated  Expressions  in  which  Jesus'   Conscious- 
ness of  Himself  is  Revealed 

Up  till  now  we  have  examined  passages  common  to 
Matthew  and  Luke  in  which  there  was  a  certain  con- 
tinuity, but  it  is  necessary  to  look  at  others  in  which, 
though  fragmentary  and  isolated,  there  is  a  similar  re- 
velation of  the  mind  of  Jesus.  It  is  impossible  to  take 
them  in  any  chronological  order,  but  the  following  are 
the  most  important. 

In  Matt.  1 1 20"24,  Luke  10 l3"15  we  have  the  woes  pro- 
nounced by  Jesus  on  Chorazin,  Bethsaida,  and  Caper- 
naum. The  mighty  works  He  has  done  in  them  are 
referred  to — miracles  of  healing,  evidently,  in  which  the 
goodness  of  God  was  leading  them  to  repentance — and 
the  doom  of  their  impenitence  is  pronounced.  It  shall 
be  more  tolerable  for  Tyre  and  Sidon,  more  tolerable 
for  Sodom,  in  the  day  of  judgment  than  for  them.  The 
work  of  Jesus  is  connected  in  His  own  mind  with  the 
last  day.  Nothing  less  than  the  final  destiny  of  men  is 
determined  by  their  attitude  to  it.  This  sense  of  the 
absolute  significance  of  the  manifestation  of  God's 
saving  power  in  Him  pervades  many  of  the  words  of 
Jesus,  and  is  the  ultimate  basis  of  what  is  called  faith  in 
His  divinity. 

Another  significant  passage  is  Matt.  1 2 30,  which  is 
found  verbatim  also  in  Luke  n  23  :  He  that  is  not  with 
Me  is  against  Me,  and  he  that  gathereth  not  with  Me 
scattereth.  This  is  on  the  same  plane,  even  if  it  is  not 
in  the  same  key,  as  'he  that  loveth  father  or  mother 
more  than  Me  is  not  worthy  of  Me.'  It  betrays  the 
consciousness  in  Jesus  of  a  significance  attaching  to  His 


248  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

own  personality  and  work  such  as  has  no  parallel  in 
Scripture.  What,  in  His  own  mind,  is  the  Person  who 
thus  summons  men  to  identify  themselves  writh  Him, 
and  declares  neutrality  impossible?  Every  one  feels 
how  weighty  His  words  are  if  they  really  express  the 
mind  of  Jesus  about  Himself,  and  though  for  those  who 
remember  other  sayings  of  Jesus  with  which  we  are  now 
familiar  there  is  no  reason  to  question  them,  we  need 
not  be  surprised  to  find  that  they  have  been  assailed 
from  various  sides.  Wellhausen1  thinks  that,  to  be 
relevant  to  the  context — that  is,  to  fit  into  their  place 
in  the  argument — they  must  be  capable  of  being  gen- 
eralised. Jesus  is  only  taking  Himself  as  an  exam- 
ple of  a  principle:  He  says,  He  who  is  not  with  Me 
is  against  Me,  but  He  is  not  specially  thinking  of  Him- 
self; what  He  means  is  that  in  any  battle  he  who  is  not  a 
friend  is  a  foe.  How  any  one  can  say  this  of  a  pas- 
sage in  which  the  standing  of  Jesus  is  the  very  point 
at  issue  (notice  the  repeated  and  emphatic  ly6  in  Matt. 
12  27~28  which  immediately  precedes,  and  the  saying  about 
speaking  against  the  Son  of  Man  in  Matt.  12  32  which 
immediately  follows)  it  is  hard  to  comprehend.  Loisy2 
does  not  attempt  to  eviscerate  the  words,  but  suggests 
that  they  do  not  come  from  Jesus.  He  points  to  the 
fact  that  in  Mark  9  40  and  Luke  950  we  have  a  saying 
in  a  somewhat  similar  situation — in  both  places  exorcism 
is  being  discussed — but  of  a  different  spirit,  though  an 
analogous  form.  In  Luke  it  reads,  He  that  is  not  against 
you  is  on  your  side;  in  Mark,  according  to  the  gener- 
ally accepted  text,  though  Wellhausen  would  make 
it  agree  with  Luke,  He  who  is  not  against  us  is  on  our 
side.  This  is  more  genial,  more  tolerant,  than  the 
saying  in  Matt.  12  30,  Luke  11 23,  and  therefore  may  be 

1  Das  Evangelium  Matthaei,  ad  loc. 

2  Les  Evangiles  Synoptiques,  i.  708. 


ISOLATED   REVELATIONS  249 

assumed  to  be  a  word  of  Jesus.  Loisy  assumes  that  it 
is  the  only  word  of  Jesus  on  the  subject,  but  the  writer 
must  confess  himself  quite  unable  to  follow  the  process 
by  which  a  redacteur  is  conjured  up  qui  aurait  cru  de- 
voir retourner  la  sentence:  ' Qui  n'est  pas  contre  vous 
est  pour  vous,1  en:  'Qui  n'est  pas  avec  moi  est  contre 
moV  Aurait  cru  devoir  is  good,  but  it  does  not  justify 
M.  Loisy  in  laying  on  the  conscience  of  an  imaginary 
redacteur  the  responsibility  of  producing  the  reasons 
which  he  himself  owes  to  his  readers.  There  is  in  fact 
no  reason  whatever  for  this  fantastic  supposition,  except 
the  reason  that  Jesus  must  not  say  things  which  indicate 
that  He  had  in  His  own  mind  the  absolute  significance 
which  He  has  in  Christian  faith.  The  two  sayings  are 
quite  independent — Luke,  as  we  have  seen,  gives  both 
— and  they  are  strictly  relevant  to  the  context  in  which 
they  occur.  In  Matt.  12  30,  Luke  11 23  Jesus  is  discuss- 
ing exorcism  with  His  enemies,  who  wish  to  arrest  His 
beneficent  work,  and  He  says  naturally,  in  the  tone  of 
warning,  He  that  is  not  with  Me  is  against  Me,  and  he 
that  gathereth  not  with  Me  scattereth.  In  Mark  9  40, 
Luke  950  He  is  discussing  the  same  subject  with  His 
disciples,  one  of  whom  has  just  told  Him  that  he  had 
seen  a  man  casting  out  devils  in  Jesus'  name  and  for- 
bidden him,  because  he  did  not  follow  with  them.  Just 
as  naturally  Jesus  answers  here,  Forbid  him  not:  he 
who  is  not  against  you  is  on  your  side.  There  is  no 
reason  to  doubt  either  the  one  saying  or  the  other,  and 
both  belong  to  the  oldest  stratum  of  evangelic  tradition. 

The  twelfth  chapter  of  Matthew  preserves  other 
words  of  Jesus  in  which  we  hear  Him  speak  of  His  own 
greatness.  Two  of  these  (in  verses  41,  42)  are  found 
also  in  Luke  (11 31  f) :  Behold,  there  is  more  than  Jonah 
here;  Behold,  there  is  more  than  Solomon  here.  A 
third  occurs  in  Matthew  only  (v.  6):    I  say  unto  you, 


250  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

there  is  something  greater  than  the  temple  here.  In  all 
these  passages  the  words  underlined  are  neuter :  Jesus 
does  not  say  directly,  I  am  greater  than  the  temple  or 
Jonah  or  Solomon,  but  He  declares  that  where  He  is  a 
greater  cause  is  represented,  greater  responsibilities  are 
imposed,  greater  issues  are  at  stake,  than  were  involved 
by  relation  to  the  most  sacred  institutions  or  the  most 
venerated  personalities  of  former  times.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary to  ask  how  Jesus  conceived  the  temple  or  Jonah  or 
Solomon  to  be  transcended  in  importance  by  Himself: 
the  significant  fact  is  that  He  did.  It  is  in  the  same  con- 
sciousness, though  in  a  different  tone,  that  He  speaks 
in  another  passage  preserved  both  in  Matthew  and 
Luke,  and  therefore  going  back  to  their  source,  though 
they  give  it  in  different  connections:  'Happy  are  your 
eyes,  for  they  see,  and  (your)  ears,  for  they  hear.  (For 
verily)  I  say  unto  you  that  many  prophets  (and  kings) 
desired  to  see  what  you  see  and  saw  not,  and  to  hear 
what  you  hear  and  heard  not.' '  The  revelation  made 
in  Jesus  not  only  brings  great  responsibilities,  but  rare 
blessedness.  The  look  which  Jesus  here  casts  upon 
the  past  is  one  of  the  most  vivid  and  beautiful  things  in 
the  New  Testament.  He  enters  sympathetically  into 
the  yearnings  of  good  men  in  distant  ages,  into  the 
hopes  that  their  eyes  grew  dim  with  waiting  for;  and 
He  is  conscious  that  their  long-deferred  fulfilment  has 
come  at  last  with  Him.  Matthew  inserts  the  words  just 
after  the  first  parable  of  Jesus,  or  rather  after  the  quota- 
tion from  Isaiah,  in  which  the  judicial  blindness  of  the 
unbelieving  people  is  foretold:  in  Luke  they  stand  in 
immediate  connexion  with  the  claim  of  Jesus  to  be  the 
Son  who  alone  knows  and  can  alone  reveal  the  Father. 
In   any  case,   they  discover  the  consciousness  of  Jesus 

1  This  is  Harnack's  reconstruction  of  the  passage:    Spriiche  u.  Reden 
Jesu,  94. 


ISOLATED   REVELATIONS  251 

that  in  Him  the  absolute  revelation  has  come:  those 
who  know  Him  have  the  happiness  which  can  never  be 
transcended.  All  the  hopes  and  longings  of  the  good 
are  consummated  in  it.  He  does  not  say,  Blessed  are 
our  eyes,  for  they  see,  and  our  ears,  for  they  hear,  as  if 
the  blessedness  were  that  of  a  new  era  in  which  He 
shared  only  as  His  contemporaries  did;  but  blessed  are 
your  eyes  and  your  ears;  for  what  they  saw  and  heard 
was  seen  and  heard  in  Him.  It  is  He  Himself — His 
presence  in  the  world,  and  the  revelation  of  God  He 
makes  in  word  and  deed — which  is  the  ground  of  His 
felicitation  of  the  disciples.  And  this,  be  it  remarked 
once  more,  is  only  another  way  in  which  He  assumes 
that  the  proper  attitude  of  men  to  Himself  is  that  which 
is  everywhere  exhibited  in  the  New  Testament  Church. 
He  has  a  place  which  is  all  His  own  as  the  Mediator  of 
the  supreme  blessedness  for  men,  and  to  deny  Him  such 
a  place  is  not  only  to  subvert  historical  Christianity,  it 
is  to  ignore  Jesus'  presentation  of  Himself. 

We  may  now  proceed  to  consider  another  passage 
which  certainly  stood  in  the  source  common  to  Matthew 
and  Luke,  and  possibly  even  in  that  source  was  a  quota- 
tion, a  passage  therefore  of  high  antiquity,  yet  in  many 
respects  hard  to  estimate.  In  Matthew  it  is  given 
continuously  in  ch.  23 34"39,  and  forms  the  climax  of 
the  great  denunciation  of  the  Pharisees  with  which 
Jesus'  ministry  in  Jerusalem  closes;  in  Luke  it  occurs 
much  earlier,  and  is  broken  into  two.  The  first  part 
(ch.  1 1 49"51) ,  as  in  Matthew,  closes  a  series  of  woes  pro- 
nounced upon  the  Pharisees,  though  the  scene  is  not  the 
temple,  but  a  Pharisee's  table  somewhere  in  Galilee  or 
Peraea;  the  second  (ch.  13  34  f)  is  connected  with  the 
saying  of  Jesus  that  it  is  not  possible  that  a  prophet 
should  perish  out  of  Jerusalem,  but  is  not  spoken  in 
the  capital  nor  at  the  close  of  Jesus'   ministry.     More 


252  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

remarkable  even  than  differences  like  these,  to  which 
the  gospels  present  many  parallels,  is  the  manner  in 
which  Luke  introduces  the  words  of  Jesus:  'Therefore 
also  the  Wisdom  of  God  said,  I  will  send  unto  them 
prophets  and  apostles,'  etc.  There  are  only  two  things 
that  can  be  said  of  this.  Either  the  evangelist,  for  no 
reason  we  can  see,  identifies  Jesus  at  this  point  with  the 
Wisdom  of  God,  and  then  goes  on  to  report  the  words 
which  Jesus  spoke  in  this  character;  or  Jesus  Himself 
quotes  from  some  book  of  Wisdom  which  has  been  lost 
to  us,  making  (as  the  evangelist  understood)  the  words 
of  the  Wisdom  of  God  His  own.  To  this  we  can  cer- 
tainly provide  no  parallel,  yet  we  may  not  be  justified 
in  pronouncing  it  impossible.  It  is  plausible,  indeed,  to 
argue  with  Loisy  and  others  that  Matthew  is  right  in 
giving  the  passage  unbroken,  and  Luke  in  representing 
it  as  a  citation.  The  point  of  view  is  that  of  an  apoca- 
lyptic writer,  surveying  God's  providential  dealings  with 
Israel,  and  like  all  his  kind  renouncing  hope.  God  has 
done  everything  to  win  them,  appealed  to  them  by 
messengers  of  every  type — prophets,  wise  men,  scribes; 
but  from  the  beginning  of  the  story  to  the  end,  from 
Genesis  to  Revelation  in  the  Hebrew  Bible,1  the  stream 
of  righteous  blood  has  never  ceased  to  flow ; 2  the  Wis- 
dom of  God  has  been  scorned  and  trampled  on  in  all 
its  representatives.  At  last  the  hour  of  vengeance  is 
at  hand,  but  ere  it  strikes,  the  heart  of  Wisdom  and 

1  The  writer  sees  no  need  to  depart  from  the  old  opinion  that  '  from 
the  blood  of  Abel  to  the  blood  of  Zachariah  (the  son  of  Barachiah)'  is  a 
way  of  saying  '  from  the  beginning  of  history  to  the  end ' ;  the  reference 
in  the  case  of  Zachariah  being  to  2  Chron.  24 20 '  •  — 2  Chron.  is  the  last  book 
in  the  Hebrew  canon.  It  is  not  certain  that  'son  of  Barachiah'  belonged 
originally  to  the  text  (it  is  wanting  in  Luke);  but  even  if  it  did,  it  would 
only  be  a  slip  of  a  perfectly  natural  kind.  As  Loisy  remarks,  it  is  not 
easy  to  see  what  reason  a  Christian  could  have  for  putting  the  murder  of 
Zachariah  the  son  of  Baruch  by  the  Zealots  at  the  beginning  of  the  siege 
of  Jerusalem  on  a  level  with  that  of  Abel. 

2  See  Matt.  23  35,  enxwvdnevov. 


ISOLATED   REVELATIONS  253 

of  God,  is  revealed  in  the  thrilling  apostrophe,  'O  Jeru- 
salem, Jerusalem,  which  killeth  the  prophets  and  stoneth 
them  that  are  sent  unto  her,  how  often  would  I  have 
gathered  thy  children  together,  even  as  a  hen  gathereth 
her  brood  under  her  wings,  and  ye  would  not.'  This  is 
not  (it  is  argued)  the  voice  of  Jesus,  referring  to  such 
visits  to  Jerusalem  and  to  such  attempts  to  win  her 
people  as  we  see  in  the  fourth  gospel:  it  is  the  voice  of 
God;  Jerusalem,  in  this  high  poetic  key,  is  not  material — 
the  geographical  city  in  which  Jesus  was  crucified;  she 
is  the  impersonation  of  Israel,  the  mother  of  the  children 
to  whom  God  appeals.  All  this  may  be  granted— per- 
haps we  should  rather  say,  All  this  must  be  granted— 
yet  the  question  remains,  Is  it  incredible  that  the  ap- 
plication of  it  to  Jesus  should  have  been  due  to  Himself? 
It  is  not  necessary  to  enter  into  the  minor  changes  by 
which  the  evangelists  adapt  the  tradition  to  their  audi- 
ence— Luke,  for  example,  replacing  the  Jewish  'wise 
men  and  scribes'  of  Matthew  by  Christian  'apostles' — 
the  two  main  points  are  the  same  in  both.  These  are 
that  Jesus  identifies  Himself  with  all  God's  action  to- 
wards Israel,  finding  it  continued  and  indeed  consum- 
mated in  Himself,  and  that  He  declares  the  doom  of 
Israel  to  be  involved  in  the  rejection  of  Himself  and 
His  messengers.  Now  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
these  are  constant  elements  in  Jesus'  consciousness  of 
Himself  and  of  His  significance;  the  last,  in  particular, 
has  come  before  us  again  and  again  (v.  Matt.  10  15,  n  20  ff), 
while  the  first  is  involved  in  the  simple  conception  of 
Himself  as  the  Messiah,  the  person  through  whom  God's 
purpose  towards  Israel  is  to  be  accomplished.  All  that 
remains  then  is  the  question,  which  is  rather  of  curious 
than  of  serious  interest,  whether  Jesus  would  have  bor- 
rowed from  a  book  to  express  elements  of  His  conscious- 
ness so  moving  and  profound.     Assuming  that  a  book  is 


254  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

quoted,  it  also  must  have  been  moving  and  profound 
— wonderfully  and  divinely  inspired  in  its  apprehen- 
sion of  God's  relations  to  Israel.  Nothing  but  the  spirit 
of  Christ  in  the  writer  (i  Peter  i  u)  could  enable  him  to 
enter  with  such  profound  sympathy  into  God's  dealings 
with  Israel,  and  so  to  speak  of  them  in  words  which 
Jesus  could  afterwards  make  His  own.  Is  it  not  gratu- 
itous to  suppose  that  the  authority  lying  behind  Mat- 
thew and  Luke — an  authority  which  we  have  good 
reason  to  believe  to  be  that  of  the  apostle  Matthew  him- 
self—put these  words  into  the  mouth  of  Jesus  without 
ground?  If  they  were  incongruous  with  what  we  have 
already  seen  to  be  the  mind  of  Jesus  about  Himself,  we 
might  accept  this  supposition  to  explain  the  incongruity; 
but  when  there  is  no  inherent  difficulty — when  the  self- 
revelation  of  Jesus  here  is  in  thorough  harmony  with 
that  which  we  have  already  seen,  on  the  basis  of  Matt. 
x.  and  xi.,  with  their  parallels  in  Luke,  to  be  truly  his- 
torical— the  supposition  is  at  least  not  inevitable.  It 
is  easier  to  believe  that  whatever  the  circumstances— 
whether  in  Galilee  or  in  Jerusalem,  whether  with  His 
death  imminent  or  at  a  greater  distance  from  it— Jesus 
took  these  wonderful  words  to  Himself.  They  open  to 
us  the  mind  in  which  He  lived  and  died.  The  presence 
in  the  world  of  a  Person  who  was  able  to  appropriate 
such  words— to  identify  so  absolutely  the  actions  and 
the  cause  of  God  with  His  own  cause  and  actions — is 
not  confined  to  this  passage;  it  is,  as  we  have  amply 
seen,  the  signature  of  the  gospels  as  a  whole.  It  is 
the  token  that  we  have  passed  from  the  Old  Testament 
to  the  New,  and  that  the  New  is  founded  not  only  on 
the  faith  of  Christians  but  on  the  mind  of  Christ.1 

1  The  striking  remark  of  Harnack  on  the  discourse  about  the  Baptist 
in  Matt.  xi.  (Spriichc  u.  Reden  Jesu,  167)  is  not  inappropriate  here:  Dass 
aber  der  ganzen  Rede  das  'Ich  bin  es'  zugrunde  liegt,  ist  kein  Grund  zu 
Bedenken,  oder  man  muss  den  Federstrich  iiber  ganzen  Inhalt  der  Evan- 


THE   SON  OF  MAN  255 

Passages  in  which  Jesus  speaks  of  Himself  as  The 
Son  of  Man 

In_view  of  the  doubt  which  has  been  cast  on  the  use 
of  this  title  by  Jesus  at  all,  it  is  worth  while  to  refer 
to  its  distribution  in  the  pages  of  the  gospels.  As  Dr. 
Armitage  Robinson  has  pointed  out,1  it  occurs  in  every 
one  of  the  strata  of  the  evangelic  records  which  criticism 
has  learned  to  distinguish.  It  is  found  in  Mark,  in  the 
non-Marcan  source  common  to  Matthew  and  Luke 
with  which  we  are  at  present  concerned,  in  passages 
peculiar  to  Matthew  and  to  Luke  respectively,  and  in 
John.  Be  the  difficulties  what  they  may,  if  anything 
can  be  established  by  testimony,  it  is  established  that 
Jesus  used  this  phrase  as  a  designation  of  Himself.  It 
was  indeed  so  characteristic  of  Him  that  no  one,  ap- 
parently, could  give  any  account  of  how  He  spoke  with- 
out making  use  of  it.  When  we  look  more  closely 
at  the  facts,  however,  it  has  to  be  admitted  that  the 
testimony  as  to  the  occasions  on  which  it  was  used  is 
not  quite  uniform.  For  instance,  in  the  document  with 
which  we  are  dealing,  it  is  sometimes  not  quite  clear 
whether  its  presence  is  due  to  Jesus  or  to  the  evangelist. 
In  Luke  6  22  we  have  a  beatitude  on  those  who  suffer  '  for 
the  Son  of  Man's  sake,'  where  the  parallel  in  Matt.  5  12 
has  'for  My  sake';  and  similarly  in  Luke  12  8  we  have 
'him  will  the  Son  of  Man  confess,'  where  Matt.  10 M 
gives  'him  will  I  confess.'  Such  disagreements,  however, 
are  the  exception.  In  the  vast  majority  of  cases,  where 
one  evangelist  has  'the  Son  of  Man,'  so  has  the  other; 
and  in  view  of  this  fact  it  seems  an  overstatement  to  say 
with  Harnack,  that  while  it  is  certain  that  Jesus  used 

gelien  ziehen.  The  admission  of  this  sound  principle  would  draw  the 
pen  through  an  immense  mass  of  what  is  regarded  as  historical  criticism 
of  the  gospels. 

1  The  Study  of  the  Gospels,  p.  49. 


256  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

this  title  we  cannot  be  certain  that  He  used  it  on  any 
given  occasion.1  The  title  is  a  significant  one;  and  if  there 
are  occasions  on  which  an  utterance  of  Jesus  depends 
for  its  point  on  this  significance,  and  on  which  the  use 
of  the  title  is  attested  both  by  Matthew  and  Luke,  and 
therefore  by  their  source,  we  may  surely  say  that  on 
these  occasions  we  have  a  certainty  of  it  as  well  assured 
as  anything  can  be  in  history.  An  attempt  has  been 
made  to  discredit  the  joint  testimony  of  Matthew  and 
Luke  to  some  striking  instances  of  the  use  of  this  title 
by  arguing  that  it  is  in  the  strictest  sense  Messianic,  and 
that  Jesus  could  not  possibly  have  made  public  and 
frequent  use  of  it  when  His  Messiahship  was  not  only 
not  proclaimed  by  Himself,  but  not  even  suspected  by 
1  His  most  intimate  disciples.  It  is  pointed  out,  too,  in 
this  connexion,  that  in  Mark,  with  the  exception  of  two 
instances  which  are  susceptible  of  easy  explanation  as 
due  to  misapprehension  by  the  evangelist  (Mark  2  10~28), 
the  title  is  not  used  till  after  Jesus  has  been  confessed 
as  the  Christ  at  Caesarea  Philippi;  and  that  when  it  is 
used  subsequently  to  this  it  is  in  the  specifically  eschato- 
logical  sense.  That  is,  it  designates  Jesus  not  as  actually 
the  Messiah,  which  would  be  a  contradiction  in  terms, 
no  actual  king  being  possible  till  the  Kingdom  had 
actually  come;  but  as  the  Person  who  is  to  be  the  Mes- 
siah, and  who  will  come  in  that  character  with  the  coming 
of  the  Kingdom. 

The  evidence  of  Mark  will  be  considered  at  a  later 
stage,  but  the  highly  problematical  treatment  of  Mark 
2  10~28,  and  the  inferences  drawn  from  it,  are  entirely 
insufficient  to  invalidate  the  witness  of  an  authority 
which  is  at  least  as  ancient  as  Mark,  and  had  as  wide  a 
I  currency  in  the  Church.  We  must  not  be  too  hasty  and 
4    too  precise  in  defining  'the  Son  of  Man,'  especially  if 

1  Spruche  u.  Reden  Jesu,  169. 


/ 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  257 

the  result  is  that  many  of  the  most  moving  and  charac- 
teristic sayings  of  the  gospel  are  obliterated,  while  those 
alone  are  left  which  perplex  or  embarrass  the  ordinary 
mind.  The  title,  no  doubt,  goes  back  primarily^  to 
Dan.  7  13.  There,  however,  it  is  not  a  title,  but  an  ap- 
pellative^ not  a  proper  name  without  meaning,  but 
a  term  with  essential  significance  of  its  own.  What  the 
seer  beholds  is  not  the  Son  of  Man,  but  one  like  a  son 
of  man — that  is,  a  human  form,  as  opposed  to  the  brute 
forms  of  the  earlier  visions.  That  this  human  form  has 
'the  Kingdom'  given  to  it — that  it  is  invested  with  a 
final,  universal,  and  glorious  sovereignty — is  true;  in 
that  sense  the  vision  is  eschatological.  This,  too,  facili- 
tated and  made  appropriate  in  the  New  Testament  the 
use  of  the  title  Son  of  Man  in  eschatological  connexions. 
But  that  on  which  the  main  emphasis  lies  in  Daniel  is  the 
humanity  of  the  form  which  is  invested  with  this  eschato- 
logical splendour,  and  though  an  apocalyptist  might  over- 
look this,  it  was  not  likely  to  be  overlooked  by  Jesus. 
We  do  not  need  to  trace  the  process  by  which  the  hu- 
man figure  of  Daniel's  vision,  which  originally  stood 
for  Israel,  'the  saints  of  the  Most  High'  (Dan.  7  18),  was 
identified  with  the  Messiah,  Israel's  ideal  representative; 
but  we  can  be  sure  that  in  appropriating  the  title  to 
Himself,  Jesus  did  not  lose  the  consciousness  of  what 
originally  gave  it  its  meaning.  It  was  always  changed 
with  the  idea  of  humanity,  as  well  as  with  that  of  final 
sovereignty,  or  apocalyptic  splendour.  The  most  tech- 
nical expression  would  fill  with  finer  import  in  the  lips  of 
Jesus,  and  admitting  the  Messianic  and  eschatological 
import  of  this  title  as  it  was  currently  used,  we  see  no 
reason  to  question  that  Jesus  may  have  employed  it 
on  occasion  with  an  emphasis  which  brought  out  another 
part  of  its  contents.  It  is  the  more  natural  to  think  so 
when  we  observe  that  the  later  New  Testament  writers 
17 


x 


258  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

who  indicate  acquaintance  with  it,  though  they  do  not 
themselves  use  it — Paul  in  i  Cor.  i527f'  and  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews  26ff — connect  it  not  with  Daniel  but 
with  the  Eighth  Psalm.  Here  Man  in  His  greatness 
and  littleness  is  the  Psalmist's  subject,  and  the  fortunes 
of  humanity,  as  represented  by  Jesus,  are  what  engage 
the  minds  of  the  Christian  authors. 

To  turn,  then,  to  the  texts  common  to  Matthew  and 
Luke,  we  find  first,  following  Luke's  order,  that  in  which 
Jesus  contrasts  Himself  with  the  Baptist  (Luke  7 31  ff', 
Matt.  n16ff).  It  occurs  incidentally  in  the  vivid  little 
parable  in  which  Jesus  pronounces  His  verdict  on  His 
I  contemporaries,  comparing  them,  in  all  their  relations  to 
\  God,  to  wilful  children,  who  will  not  be  in  earnest  with 
religion  in  any  form,  sombre  or  winsome.  '  John  came 
neither  eating  nor  drinking,  and  they  say  He  has  a  devil. 
The  Son  of  Man  came  eating  and  drinking,  and  they 
say  Behold  a  man  gluttonous  and  a  wine-bibber,  a  friend 
of  publicans  and  sinners.'  It  is  not  easy  to  understand 
why  Harnack  thinks  it  'more  than  doubtful'  that  Jesus 
used  this  title  here.  He  says  that  in  the  discourse  which 
precedes  and  of  which  this  forms  part,  Jesus  has  clearly 
enough  avoided  any  designation  of  Himself  as  Mes- 
siah; but  He  shows  convincingly  that  the  Messianic 
consciousness  of  Jesus  pervades  this  speech  from  begin- 
ning to  end.  He  does  not  regard  this  as  unhistorical,1 
but  if  its  historicity  be  admitted,  why  should  we  hesi- 
tate to  think  that  the  Messianic  consciousness  might 
reveal  itself  in  a  significant  or  suggestive  term?  It  is 
true  that  Jesus  did  not  at  this  period  call  Himself  the 
Christ,  and  that  even  after  the  confession  at  Caesarea 
Philippi,  He  forbade  His  disciples  to  tell  any  one  that 
He  was  so;  but  for  this  there  were  reasons.  The  Christ 
or  the  Messiah  was  a  term  which  for  the  Jews  was  laden 

1  Sprilche  u.  Reden  Jesu,  167,  quoted  above  in  note  on  p.  254. 


THE   SON  OF  MAN  259 

with  political  meanings  and  hopes  in  which  Jesus  had  no 
part;  He  deliberately  avoided  using  it  therefore,  be- 
cause to  use  it  was  to  excite  expectations  which  it  was 
His  very  calling  to  disown.  But  that  is  no  reason  why 
He  should  not  have  employed  another  title  to  express 
His  unique  relation  to  the  Kingdom  of  God,  if  such 
a  title  could  be  found;  a  title  which  was  at^  once  free 
from  the  objectionable  political  associations  of  'the 
Christ/  and  singularly  appropriate  to  convey  some  of  the 
most  characteristic  thoughts  of  Jesus.  The  title  Spn  of 
Man  lay  to  His  hand.  It  implied  at  once  humanity  and 
sovereignty,  but  while  both  of  these  ideas  are  essential 
elements  in  the  meaning,  either  might  be  uppermost, 
while  the  other  was  more  or  less  latent.  In  the  passage 
before  us,  it  is  the  humanity  which  is  emphasised.  The  J 
Baptist  had  seemed  to  separate  himself  from  men — to 
rise,  in  a  sense,  above  the  measure  of  common  humanity. 
He  would  not  be  in  debt  to  it  for  anything,  neither  so- 
ciety nor  food  nor  clothing.  He  was  an  exalted,  aus- 
tere, and  solitary  being;  when  common  sense  ceased 
to  be  frightened  by  his  preaching,  it  said  'he  is  pos- 
sessed by  a  demon — mad.'  But  the  person  whose  trans- 
cendent greatness  as  compared  with  John  is  the  pre- 
supposition of  the  whole  discourse  comes  in  quite  another 
fashion.  He  is  not  too  good  to  take  the  world  as  God 
has  made  it,  to  enter  into  the  common  life  of  men,  to 
meet  them,  so  to  speak,  on  their  own  level.  He  comes 
'eating  and  drinking.'  Humanity  is  the  very  badge 
and  device  under  which  he  lives.  This  is  what  the 
title  particularly  expresses,  and  surely  a  title  or  de- 
scriptive designation  is  wanted.  To  put  'I'  into  the 
sentence  instead  of  'the  Son  of  Man/  is  to  rob  it  of  its 
point  and  beauty.  But  something  is  lost  also  if  we 
ignore  the  latent  sense  of  sovereignty  which  is  always 
an  elemenc  in  the  meaning.     To  render  the  words  as 


) 


I 


260  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

O.  Holtzmann  does,1  Es  kam  das  Menschenkind,  is  to 
fail  utterly  to  do  justice  to  the  'I  am  he/  which  as  Har- 
nack  says  underlies  the  passage  throughout.  Its  in- 
terest, in  relation  to  the  purpose  of  this  study,  is  that  it 
reveals  Jesus  to  us  making  (if  we  may  put  it  so)  in  the  most 
unassuming  manner  the  most  stupendous  assumption — 
identifying  Himself  with  men  in  all  that  is  human,  shar- 
ing with  them  in  the  humble  common  order  of  their  life 
in  this  world,  yet  representing  for  them  at  that  level  the 
supreme  wisdom  of  God,  and  betraying  the  sense  that 
the  final  triumph  of  humanity — that  victory  of  the  human 
over  the  brutal  in  which  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  an- 
nounced to  come — is  a  triumph  identical  with  his  own. 
It  is  not  only  in  what  have  been  regarded  as  properly 
eschatological  passages  that  we  have  to  think  of  this  last 
aspect  of  the  Son  of  Man:  more  or  less  it  must  reach 
the  mind  everywhere.  Only  because  the  final  sover- 
eignty and  all  that  it  involves  is  latent  in  the  term  can 
he  who  says  with  such  genial  humility,  The  Son  of  Man 
came  eating  and  drinking,  say  at  the  same  time,  Blessed 
is  he  whosoever  shall  not  be  offended  in  Me,  or  Whoso 
shall  confess  Me  before  men,  him  shall  the  Son  of  Man 
confess  before  the  angels  of  God. 

The  second  of  our  examples  is  found  verbatim  in 
Matt.  8  20,  Luke  9 58 :  The  foxes  have  holes  and  the  birds 
of  the  air  have  nests,  but  the  Son  of  Man  hath  not  where 
to  lay  His  head.  This  is  surely  a  self-authenticating 
word.  To  replace  the  Son  of  Man  by  the  personal 
pronoun  is  to  take  the  weight  as  well  as  the  beauty  of 
the  saying  away.  Jesus  does  not  speak  to  repel  the 
person — a  scribe,  according  to  Matthew — who  offered 
to  follow  Him  wherever  He  went,  but  He  invites  him  to 
count  the  cost.  He  does  not  speak  as  if  such  devotion 
were  beyond  what  He  could  claim;  on  the  contrary,  the 

1  In  his  Leben  Jesn,  p.  129. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  261 

immediate  context  in  both  evangelists  represents  Him  as 
demanding  from  an  aspirant  to  discipleship  that  cruel 
sacrifice  of  natural  affection  which  we  have  already  dis- 
cussed in  principle:  Follow  Me,  and  let  the  dead  bury 
their  own  dead.  His  claims  cannot  be  put  too  high. 
What  breaks  through  at  this  point  in  the  use  of  the  title 
Son  of  Man — a  title  so  appropriate  where  Jesus  finds 
that  His  humanity  is  literally  all  that  He  has  in  common 
with  His  kind,  all  properties  and  privileges  of  other  men 
being  denied  Him — is  this  sense  of  the  disparity  be- 
tween His  present  lot  and  that  which  is  destined  for 
Him.  The  pathos  of  His  situation  is  not  that  of  a  poor 
man,  but  that  of  a  disinherited  King.  He  is  the  heir  of 
all  things,  and  when  He  calls  Himself  the  Son  of  Man, 
He  betrays  that  He  thinks  of  Himself  in  that  character; 
but  He  sees  not  yet  all  things  put  under  Him.  How 
much  of  the  sense  of  this  reached  the  mind  of  His  hear- 
ers— how  far,  for  example,  the  scribe  here  addressed 
felt  that  the  coming  King  had  an  infinitely  stronger 
claim  on  the  loyalty  of  his  followers  just  because  He  was 
homeless  as  yet  in  the  realm  which  was  truly  His  own — 
we  may  not  be  able  to  tell.  Sometimes  a  man,  even  in 
speaking  to  others,  speaks  half  to  himself,  utters  his 
mind  heedless  of  whether  it  can  all  be  apprehended  or 
appreciated  at  the  moment,  because  he  is  sure  it  will  be 
afterwards.  No  one  who  heard  this  word  could  forget 
it.  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  authority  on 
which  Matthew  and  Luke  are  dependent  made  any 
mistake  in  recording  it;  and  its  whole  meaning  and 
power  would  be  disclosed  as  other  sides  of  what  'the  Son 
of  Man'  meant  were  revealed  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus. 
Passing  by  the  occurrence  of  the  phrase  in  Matt.  12  40, 
where  we  have  an  interpretation  by  the  evangelist  of  a 
word  of  Jesus  which  is  simply  reported  in  Luke  11 30,  we 
come  to  the  last  case  in  which  it  is  used  by  both  Matthew 


, 


I 


262  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

and  Luke,  a  case  of  peculiar  difficulty:  Matt.  12  S2)  Luke 
12 10.  Here  blaspheming  or  speaking  a  word  against 
the  Son  of  Man  is  contrasted,  as  a  pardonable  sin,  with 
blaspheming  the  Spirit,  which  is  unpardonable.  Such  a 
contrast  is  only  intelligible  if  the  Son  of  Man  is  a  person 
who  suggests  in  the  first  instance  the  human  rather  than 
the  divine,  a  person  therefore  with  regard  to  whom  mis- 
apprehension, contempt,  and  petulance  are  easy  to  under- 
stand and  to  condone.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  obvious 
that  the  title  Son  of  Man  must  be  significant  here,  and  sig- 
nificant of  something  great:  if  it  were  merely  a  synonym 
for  '1/  and  if  the  speaker  were  only  an  ordinary  person 
like  those  to  whom  He  spoke,  what  He  says  would  be 
gratuitous  and  even  profane.  Who  am  'I,'  to  say  that 
whoever  speaks  a  word  against  me  it  shall  be  forgiven 
him,  and  to  compare,  or  if  it  be  preferred,  to  contrast 
speaking  against  myself  with  speaking  against  the  Holy 
Spirit?  Even  to  contrast  two  things  implies  some  sort 
of  proportion  between  them,  and  it  is  inept  to  say  that 
a  sin  is  pardonable,  unless  there  is  a  natural  presump- 
tion that  it  is  in  itself  a  grave  sin.  This  is  the  situa- 
tion here.  Jesus  calls  himself  the  Son  of  Man  with 
the  sense  of  what  the  term  involves.  The  Son  of  Man 
is  the  destined  King  in  the  Kingdom  of  God,  the  glo- 
rious person  who  is  to  hold  the  sovereignty  when  the 
tyranny  of  Satan  has  been  overthrown.  It  is  this  which 
makes  speaking  against  Him  alarming.  In  spite  of  His 
destined  glory,  however,  He  moves  among  men  in  a 
lowly  guise  and  in  familiar  relations  which  expose  Him 
to  hasty  and  unworthy  censures.  It  is  such  a  censure 
that  we  find  in  the  petulant  outburst,  'He  is  beside  him- 
self; but  offensive  as  it  is,  the  circumstances  make  it 
pardonable.  Nevertheless,  in  the  very  fact  that  Jesus 
pronounces  it  to  be  pardonable,  and  that  He  names  it  in 
the  same  breath  with  the  sin  against  the  Spirit,  which 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  263 

He  declares  to  be  unpardonable,  we  see  how  seriously 
He  regarded  it,  and  how  singularly  therefore  He  thought 
of  Himself.  In  its  combination  of  self-abnegation  and 
self-assertion,  the  passage  is  exactly  parallel  to  that  in 
which  Jesus  disclaims  knowledge  of  'that  day  or  that 
hour, '  while  at  the  same  time  He  assumes  a  place  higher 
than  men  or  angels,  the  place  of  One  who  is  'the  Son' 
in  the  unqualified  sense  in  which  God  is  'the  Father' 
(Mark  13 32).  Schmiedel  is  probably  right  in  holding 
that  this  saying  about  the  pardonableness  of  speaking  a 
word  against  the  Son  of  Man  is  a  genuine  word  of  Jesus: 
it  is  certainly  not  likely  to  have  been  invented  by  people 
who  worshipped  Him.  But  even  if  he  were  wrong,  and 
Wellhausen  were  right  in  his  belief  that  the  true  form  of 
Jesus'  words  is  preserved  in  Mark,  the  result,  so  far  as 
our  argument  is  concerned,  would  hardly  be  affected. 
In  Mark  (3  28  ff),  there  is  no  mention  of  the  Son  of  Man, 
but  all  sins  are  said  to  be  pardonable  to  the  sons  of  men 
except  that  of  blaspheming  the  Holy  Spirit.  Now  the 
sin  of  blaspheming  the  Spirit,  as  the  context  shows, 
is  the  sin  of  those  who  look  at  the  works  of  redeeming 
love  wrought  by  the  Spirit  of  God  in  Jesus — for  it  is  by 
the  Spirit  of  God  he  casts  out  demons— and  ascribe  them 
to  Beelzebub.  In  other  words,  it  is  by  a  sin  committed 
against  the  person  and  work  of  Jesus  that  men  involve 
themselves  in  unpardonable  guilt.  This  puts  Him  even 
more  unequivocally  than  the  form  of  words  common  to 
Matthew  and  Luke  into  a  place  of  peculiar  greatness. 
It  identifies  Him  with  the  cause  of  God  in  that  absolute 
fashion  of  which  we  have  already  had  illustrations,  and 
it  makes  the  destiny  of  men  depend  for  ever  on  their 
attitude  to  Himself  and  His  work.1 

In  the  passages  which  have  just  been  reviewed  what     y 
is  uppermost  in  the  title  Son  of  Man  is  the  suggestion  of  A 

1  On  this  paragraph,  see  the  author's  article  in  The  Expositor,  Dec.  1907. 


264  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

humanity— the  lowliness  of  Jesus,  His  kinship  with  men, 
that  in  His  aspect  and  circumstances  which  exposes  Him 
to  depreciation  and  misunderstanding.  The  other  side 
of  the  meaning— that  in  which  the  glorious  destiny  of  the 
Son  of  Man  is  involved — can  never  have  been  absent, 
though  in  these  cases  it  is  more  or  less  latent.  Matthew 
and  Luke  have,  however,  in  common  another  series  of 
passages  in  which  the  glorious  destiny  of  the  Son  of  Man 
is  the  very  thing  which  is  affirmed.  They  are  to  be  found 
in  Matt.  24  27. 37. 39.  «  .  Luke  17  24- 26- 30,  12  40.  To  these 
we  should  perhaps  add  Luke  12  8,  though  in  the  parallel 
in  Matt.  10  32  the  Son  of  Man  is  wanting,  and  is  represented 
by  'I.'  In  all  these  passages  the  eschatological  meaning 
is  undoubted:  Jesus  speaks  of  Himself  definitely  as  the 
person  in  whom  the  glorious  prophecy  of  Dan.  7  13  ff>  is 
to  be  suddenly  and  finally  fulfilled.  Hence  there  can  be 
no  question  that  Jesus  Himself  inspired  the  hope  of  His 
Return  which  fills  the  New  Testament.  If  He  renounced 
Messiahship  in  the  political  sense  in  which  it  was  popular 
with  the  Jews,  He  claimed  it  in  the  supernatural  sense 
which  had  gathered  around  it  since  Daniel.  He  identified 
Himself  with  the  human  form  to  which  'the  kingdom' 
was  to  be  given.  Nothing  isolates  more  conspicuously 
Jesus'  sense  of  what  He  was  in  relation  to  God  and  to 
man.  Nothing  marks  off  His  consciousness  of  Himself 
more  distinctly  from  every  form  of  prophetic  conscious- 
ness than  this,  that  whereas  the  prophets  looked  forward 
to  the  coming  of  another,  what  Jesus  saw  as  the  final  and 
glorious  consummation  of  God's  purposes  was  His  own 
coming  again.  It  is  not  to  the  purpose  to  raise  here  the 
question  how  far  the  words  of  Jesus  are  to  be  taken 
literally,  or  how  far  they  are  merely  symbolical — how 
far  they  have  proved  substantially  true,  or  how  far  we  must 
acknowledge  in  them  that  illusive  element  which  is  in- 
separable from  predictivejprophecv^.     When  we  consider 


THE   SON   OF   MAN  265 

that  everything  else  in  the  seventh  chapter  of  Daniel  is 
symbolic — the  sea,  for  example,  and  the  brutal  monsters 
which  arise  out  of  it — it  is  at  least  plausible  to  argue  that 
much  of  what  is  spectacular  in  Jesus'  words  about  the 
sudden  and  glorious  advent  of  the  Son  of  Man  is  sym- 
bolical also.  We  are  as  likely  to  misunderstand  Him 
if  we  read  in  a  legal  or  prosaic  spirit,  pressing  the  literal 
meaning  of  every  term,  as  if  we  exaggerate  the  symbol 
till  no  palpable  fact  remains.  But  whatever  the  true 
method  of  interpretation  may  be,  it  cannot  be  questioned 
that  in  His  own  mind  Jesus  was  identified  with  that  mys- 
terious and  transcendent  Person  through  whom  the 
kingdom  of  God  at  last  comes  in  glory.  If  we  knew 
nothing  of  Jesus  but  this,  it  might  well  seem  disconcerting : 
He  could  be  represented  with  much  plausibility  as  the 
victim  of  a  fanatical  delusion.  But  the  mind  of  Jesus 
about  Himself,  in  relation  to  God  and  to  the  establishment 
of  His  kingdom,  has  already  come  before  us  in  a  great 
variety  of  aspects,  and  forbids  any  such  conclusion.  That 
mind,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  is  throughout  consistent 
with  itself,  and  in  harmony  with  the  place  claimed  by 
Jesus  in  the  prophecies  of  His  glorious  Coming.  It  is 
not  fanatical,  and  there  is  no  shadow  of  unreality  about 
it;  the  unique  place  He  assumes,  the  unique  authority 
He  claims  to  exercise,  vindicate  themselves  in  the  mind 
and  conscience  of  man.  It  is  not  only  in  its  glorious  con- 
summation that  the  kingdom  is  identified  with  Him; 
it  is  identified  with  Him  all  through  His  career.  The 
attitude  which  He  requires  of  men  is  involved  in  this 
fact,  and  it  is  always  the  same.  When  He  speaks  of  His  .1 
Advent  in  glory  and  of  the  manner  in  which  the  destiny 
of  men  is  then  decided  for  ever  by  their  relation  to  Himself, 
He  only  concentrates  into  one  tremendous  expression  what 
is  the  burden  of  His  self-revelation  from  beginning  to  end. 
So  far  as  it  has  been  carried,  the  results  of  our  investi- 


:J 


-i 


266  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

gation  are,  we  venture  to  assert,  entirely  favourable  to  the 
catholic  Christian  attitude  to  Jesus.  The  investigation 
has  been  strictly  limited  to  the  oldest  accessible  authorities 
— the  source  common  to  Matthew  and  Luke,  with  one  or 
two  references  at  the  outset  to  Mark;  and  the  conclusion 
is  all  the  more  important.  We  do  not  say  that  it  vindicates 
any  particular  Christology — Arian,  Athanasian,  or  Kenotic; 
or  even  any  of  the  Christological  types  represented  in  the 
apostolic  writings.  But  it  does  what  is  infinitely  more 
important.  It  demonstrates — the  word  is  not  too  strong — 
that  Jesus  was  not,  in  His  own  consciousness  of  Himself, 
merely  one  man  more  in  the  world,  though  one  who  (as 
it  happened)  knew  God  better  than  others;  He  was  not 
simply  a  prophet  like  those  who  had  gone  before;  He 
was  not  a  Jew  who  like  all  other  Jews  saw  the  will  of 
God  in  the  Old  Testament,  but  believed  Himself  to  possess 
a  better  way  of  doing  it  than  the  other  teachers  of  the  time; 
He  was  not  'the  ideal  religious  subject,'  the  inspiring 
pattern  of  man's  true  attitude  to  God.  He  was  more  than 
all  this,  and  in  some  respects  very  different  from  all  this. 
'The  whole  literature,'  we  may  say — borrowing  for  appli- 
cation to  the  earliest  evangelic  records  what  Professor 
Cairns  has  observed  of  the  New  Testament  in  general — 
'the  whole  literature  is  inspired  by  the  conviction,  not 
simply  that  something  new  has  been  discovered,  but  that 
something  new  has  happened.''1  When  Christ  is  in  the 
world  it  is  another  world;  there  is  a  Person  in  it  to  whom 
our  attitude  must  be  other  than  it  is  to  men  in  general, 
just  because  He  is  and  reveals  Himself  to  be  other.  '  Men 
there  have  been  who  felt  themselves  able  to  say  "J  know," 
and  who  died  like  Him  for  their  convictions.  But  He  was 
able  to  say  "I  am."  I  am  that  to  which  prophecy  has 
pointed,  and  was  able  to  feel  Himself  worthy  to  be  that.'2 

1  Christianity  in  the  Modern  World,  p.  147. 

2  G.  A.  Smith,  Jerusalem,  ii.  p.  548. 


JESUS  IN  MARK'S  GOSPEL  267 

This  is  indeed  the  vital  point  of  difference  between  the  Old 
Testament  and  the  New,  the  foundation  on  which  alone 
Christianity  can  rest  as  a  faith  specifically  distinct  from 
that  of  the  Old  Testament.  It  is  so  far  from  being  the 
truth  that  the  Son  has  no  place  in  the  gospel  as  it  was 
preached  by  Jesus,  that  the  gospel,  even  as  preached  by 
Jesus,  is  constituted  by  the  presence  of  the  Son  in  the 
world,  and  the  place  given  to  Him  in  religion.  There 
is  no  Christianity  except  through  a  particular  attitude  of 
the  soul  to  Jesus,  and  that  attitude  of  the  soul  to  Jesus 
is  demanded  at  every  point,  in  every  relation,  and  in 
every  mode,  tacit  and  explicit,  by  Jesus  Himself.  Chris- 
tianity is  what  it  is  through  the  presence  in  it  of  the  Medi- 
ator, and  it  is  not  only  in  the  faith  of  Christians  but  in 
the  mind  of  Jesus  Himself  that  the  character  of  Mediator 
is  claimed.  It  is  a  character,  happily,  which  can  be 
recognised  without  raising  either  physical  questions,  or 
metaphysical— without  asking,  not  to  speak  of  answering, 
the  questions  to  which  the  creed  makers  and  the  authors 
of  Christologies  have  devoted  their  powers;  but  to  recog- 
nise it  means  that  Jesus  becomes  the  object  of  our  faith. 
We  trust  in  Him,  commit  ourselves  to  Him,  believe  in  God 
through  Him,  and  are  conscious  when  we  do  so  that  we 
have  reached  the  final  truth  of  things. 

Up  to  this  point,  we  have  examined  mainly  discourses 
of  Jesus  as  recorded  in  Q,  and  have  based  our  argument 
on  the  words  of  Jesus  Himself.  But  while  speech  is  in 
some  ways  the  most  adequate  expression  of  mind,  a  man 
may  reveal  what  he  is,  and  what  he  conceives  himself 
to  be,  by  action,  which  is  more  speaking  even  than  words. 
It  has  already  been  noticed  that  the  second  of  the  early 
witnesses  to  Jesus— the  Gospel  according  to  Mark — con- 
tains few  discourses  of  Jesus:  it  is  a  picture  of  His  life 
rather  than  a  record  of  His  words.  It  is,  however,  a  very 
early  picture,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  circulated 


1 


268  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

in  the  Christian  churches,  whether  in  documentary  form, 
or  through  the  labours  of  catechists,  contemporaneously 
with  the  source  we  have  already  scrutinised.  Whether 
there  was  any  closer  connexion  between  the  two  it  is 
perhaps  impossible  to  tell.  Scholars  have  come  to  no 
convincing  conclusion.  Wellhausen  thinks  Mark  the 
earlier,  and  that  where  the  other  source  departs  from 
Mark  we  see  traces  of  the  progressive  Christianising  of 
the  record — that  is,  of  its  lapsing  from  the  mind  of  Jesus, 
who  was  not  a  Christian  but  a  Jew,  to  the  mind  of  the  later 
church  about  Jesus;  Weiss,  after  the  studies  of  a  lifetime, 
persists  in  the  belief  that  Mark  is  the  later  of  the  two,  and 
in  many  essential  respects  was  dependent  on  the  other.1 
Whether  the  theory  of  successive  editions  of  Mark  would 
enable  criticism  to  find  a  way  of  reconciling  these  contrary 
opinions  is  a  doubtful  question,  but  hardly  of  importance 
in  this  connexion.  To  all  intents  and  purposes,  except 
those  of  literary  criticism,  Mark  and  Q  are  contemporary 
witnesses  to  Jesus:  each  of  them  tells  us  what  was  believed 
about  Him  in  the  church  not  far  from  a.d.  70,  and  the 
only  thing  that  is  of  interest  is  whether  or  not  they  concur 
in  their  testimony.     This  will  appear  as  we  proceed. 

Mark  opens  with  a  title  or  superscription  which  cannot 
be  ignored:  'the  beginning  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ, 
Son  of  God. '  As  these  words  show,  he  has  a  conception 
of  Jesus  and  of  the  meaning  of  His  life,  death  and  resur- 
rection; and  it  is  in  the  light  of  this  conception  that  he 
interprets  the  facts.     Jesus  is  to  him  the  Messiah,  and 

1  Weiss  has  succeeded  in  convincing  Harnack  that  Mark  was  acquainted 
with  Q,  though  Harnack  thinks  this  important  result  may  have  to  be 
limited  to  this  intent,  that  Mark  at  least  knew  the  circle  in  which  Q  (or 
great  parts  of  Q),  before  being  fixed  in  writing,  existed  in  a  fixed  oral 
form  which  was  practically  the  same.  See  note  on  p.  176  above.  This 
limitation,  however,  really  means  that  Harnack  is  not  convinced  *by 
Weiss's  arguments,  so  as  to  accept  Weiss's  view  of  the  literary  relations 
of  Mark  and  Q;  it  is  Harnack's  recognition  of  the  fact  that  a  larger  part 
must  be  given  to  oral  tradition,  as  well  as  to  documents,  in  explaining 
the  composition  of  our  gospels. 


JESUS  IN  MARK'S   GOSPEL  269 

the  story  of  His  life,  when  read  out  in  its  religious  signifi- 
cance, is  gospel  or  glad  tidings.  It  was  not  possible  for 
him  to  tell  the  story  otherwise  than  he  has  done,  for  this 
is  the  truth  of  Jesus  as  it  has  been  apprehended  by  him. 
No  doubt  a  life  of  Jesus  could  have  been  written  by  one 
who  never  became  a  believer — by  an  agent,  for  example, 
of  the  Jewish  or  of  the  Roman  government — who  ob- 
served Him  from  the  outside,  as  it  were,  without  sympathy, 
and  without  being  drawn  into  unison  with  His  mind  and 
purpose;  but  it  would  not  follow  that  such  a  life  would 
be  truer  than  the  representation  of  Jesus  made  by  a  believer. 
On  the  contrary,  the  very  things  that  in  a  great  spiritual 
life  are  most  real  and  most  significant  would  baffle  the 
supposed  impartial  observer;  he  would  either  be  uncon- 
scious of  them,  or  they  would  mock  his  power  of  descrip- 
tion and  comprehension.  Only  a  person  responsive  to 
the  kind  of  influence  Jesus  exerted  is  qualified  to  convey 
a  true  impression  of  what  He  was.  It  may  be  quite 
natural  for  him,  in  trying  to  convey  such  an  impression, 
to  set  the  facts  with  which  he  has  to  deal  in  a  certain  light; 
but  just  in  proportion  as  he  reverences  Jesus — just  in 
proportion  as  he  believes  in  Him  and  calls  Him  Lord — 
will  it  be  unnatural  for  him  to  distort  facts  or  to  invent 
them. 

Mark's  History  the  History  of  the  Son  of  God 

That  the  story  of  Mark  is  the  story  of  the  Christ,  of 
One  whose  consciousness  from  first  to  last  is  that  of  the 
Messianic  King  through  whom  the  reign  of  God  is  to 
be  established,  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  like  the  source 
already  examined  Mark  begins  with  the  Baptism  and 
the  Temptation  of  Jesus.  He  has  no  interest  in  any- 
thing that  precedes;  he  brings  Jesus  on  the  stage  in 
the  hour  in  which  His  divine  sonship  is  proclaimed,  and 
it  is  in  this  character  that  he  conceives  Him  living  and 


270  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

acting  all  through.  What  the  sonship  to  God  means  is 
rather  to  be  made  out  from  the  gospel — which  is,  so  to 
speak,  a  progressive  illustration  of  it — than  deduced 
from  the  words.  The  term  Christ  or  Messiah,  though 
used  in  the  title,  is  not  at  this  point  used  in  the  history. 
Perhaps  that  is  to  preclude  misleading  inferences.  As 
the  Son  of  God  referred  to  in  the  ideal  picture  of  the 
second  psalm,  Jesus  is  the  Anointed  in  and  through 
whom  God's  Kingdom  is  to  be  established;  He  is  the 
Messiah;  but  the  nature  of  His  Messiahship  and  of  the 
sovereignty  it  is  to  establish  awaits  definition  in  His 
life.  It  may  quite  well  be  that  the  Christ  of  God  is  not 
the  same  as  the  Christ  of  fanatical  Jewish  hopes.  This 
apart,  however,  there  is  not  for  the  evangelist  any  con- 
sciousness of  himself  on  the  part  of  Jesus  except  the 
Messianic  self-consciousness;  it  is  as  Son  of  God  that 
He  lives,  moves,  and  has  His  being,  and  it  is  in  this  char- 
acter and  consciousness  that  He  is  exhibited  in  the  gospel. 
It  is  more  than  daring  simply  to  set  this  aside.  If  we 
know  anything  at  all  of  Jesus,  we  know  that  He  was  bap- 
tized by  John,  and  that  the  baptism  represented  a  crisis 
in  His  experience:  if  it  did  not  mean  what  all  our  author- 
ities represent  it  to  mean,  we  may  as  well  cease  to  ask 
questions  about  Him.  From  first  to  last  in  the  gospel, 
Jesus  acts  as  one  conscious  of  a  unique  vocation,  a  unique 
endowment,  a  unique  relation  to  God  and  men.  It  is 
easy  to  decide  on  a  priori  grounds  that  this  is  impossible, 
and  not  merely  to  leave  the  only  Christianity  known  to 
history  without  explanation,  but  to  pronounce  it  a  complete 
mistake;  it  is  easy  to  do  this,  but  it  is  not  writing  history. 
If  the  life  of  Jesus  reflected  itself,  in  minds  which  sub- 
mitted to  its  influence,  in  the  form  which  we  see  in  the 
gospel,  then  all  the  probabilities  are  that  that  form  is 
substantially  correct.  This  word  or  that  may  have  suf- 
fered modification  in  transmission — this  incident  or  that 


A  TYPICAL  MIGHTY  WORK  271 

may  have  been  pointed  or  deflected  as  it  was  preached  in 
this  or  that  environment — but  the  attitude  of  Jesus  to  God 
and  to  men,  and  the  attitude  which  this  required  on  the 
part  of  men  to  Jesus,  cannot  have  been  misconceived  and 
cannot  be  misrepresented.  It  is  the  direct  and  uncon- 
scious reflexion  of  an  immediate  impression,  and  the 
possibility  of  error  is  excluded. 

Jesus  is  introduced  in  Mark  as  'calling'  men  to  follow 
Him,  as  preaching  in  the  synagogues,  'as  one  having 
authority,'  and  as  casting  out  demons  (Mark  1  16~28).  The 
evangelist  does  not  represent  Him  as  making  formal 
claims  from  the  outset,  or  putting  His  consciousness  of 
His  relation  to  God  and  man  into  challenging  words,  but 
the  spiritual  power  with  which  He  was  invested  in  the 
baptism,  and  which  marks  Him  out  as  the  Son  of  God, 
underlies  all  His  words  and  deeds.  The  Messiahship  is 
exhibited,  but  not  stated:  this  at  least  is  how  the  evan- 
gelist understands  it.  That  he  is  right  in  so  understanding 
it  is  clear  from  the  words  of  Jesus  Himself  (in  Matt.  11 5), 
which  we  have  considered  above  (p.  230  f.).  To  heal 
the  sick  and  to  preach  the  gospel  to  the  poor,  inadequate 
and  unsatisfactory  as  some  onlookers  might  think  it,  is 
emphatically  to  do  '  the  works  of  the  Christ.'  We  do  not 
read  the  opening  scenes  in  Mark  as  they  were  meant  to 
be  read  if  we  do  not  perceive  that  the  Messianic  conscious- 
ness of  Jesus  is  latent  in  them  and  is  the  key  to  which 
they  are  all  set. 

A  Typical  dvvafus  or  Mighty  Work  in  which  Jesus' 
Consciousness  of  Himself  is  revealed 

(Mark  2  K12) 

This  will  become  unmistakable  if  we  examine  such  a 
typical  instance  in  Mark  of  the  duvdfiets  to  which  Jesus 
appeals  (Matt.  11  21  ff )  as  the  healing  of  the  paralytic  in 
ch.  2  x"12.     There  are    several  points  of  interest  in  this 


272  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

narrative  which  it  is  important  to  notice.  When  the  man 
was  brought  to  Jesus,  Jesus  said  to  him,  Child,  thy  sins 
are  forgiven.  Some  scribes  who  sat  by  accused  Him  of 
blasphemy:  Who  can  forgive  sins  but  God  only?  Jesus 
had  His  own  way  of  dealing  with  the  charge,  but  there 
are  moderns  who  clear  Him  at  a  much  easier  rate.  His 
words,  they  tell  us,  were  merely  declaratory :  as  He  looked 
on  the  face  of  the  paralytic  man,  He  saw  that  he  was 
truly  penitent  for  his  sins — presumably  those  which  had 
induced  the  palsy;  and  knowing  that  under  the  rule  of 
a  paternal  God  penitence  and  pardon  are  correlative 
terms,  He  simply  announced  to  the  man  what  was  true 
quite  independently  of  the  announcement,  that  his  sins 
no  longer  stood  against  him  in  the  reckoning  of  God. 
This,  however,  is  entirely  out  of  keeping  with  what  fol- 
lows. Jesus  does  not  claim  power  on  earth  to  declare 
that  sins  are  forgiven,  but  to  forgive  them  (ver.  10) ;  and 
the  scribes  were  quite  right  in  assuming  that  He  exer- 
cised the  prerogative  of  pardon.  He  Himself  proceeds 
to  act  upon  their  assumption.  It  is  easy  to  say,  Thy  sins 
are  forgiven,  but  not  easy  to  tell  whether  anything  is 
accomplished  by  the  words.  Who  can  tell  whether  the 
spiritual  miracle  which  they  assume — for  of  all  things 
that  we  can  conceive  the  forgiveness  of  sins  is  the  most 
purely  supernatural — really  takes  place?  Who  can  certify 
us  that  the  load  is  really  lifted  from  the  bad  conscience, 
that  despair  passes  away,  that  the  gate  of  righteousness 
opens  again  to  the  man  who  had  shut  it  in  his  own  face? 
It  is  an  objection  of  this  kind,  an  objection  not  to  a  decla- 
ration but  to  what  purports  to  be  a  real  exercise  of  the 
prerogative  of  pardon,  that  Jesus  meets  in  what  follows. 
It  is  easy  to  say  to  a  paralysed  man,  Arise,  take  up  thy 
bed  and  walk;  but  it  is  hazardous,  because  if  nothing 
happens  the  pretensions  of  the  would-be  healer  are  ex- 
posed.    Jesus  puts  Himself  to  this  test,  and  heals  the  body 


JESUS  FORGIVING  SINS  273 

with  a  word  the  effect  of  which  is  sensible  and  indisputa- 
ble, that  men  may  believe  that  He  has  power  also  to  heal 
the  soul.  He  works  on  this  poor  man  the  comprehensive 
miracle  of  redemption,  forgiving  all  his  iniquities,  healing 
all  his  diseases.  It  is  not  declarations  we  have  to  do  with, 
here  or  anywhere  in  the  gospels,  but  achievements.  Jesus 
no  more  told  the  man  his  sins  were  forgiven  than  He  told 
him  he  was  not  lame.  With  the  same  word  of  redemp- 
tive power  He  lifted  the  disabling  touch  of  sin  from  his  soul 
and  of  paralysis  from  his  limbs,  and  in  doing  so  revealed 
what  He  was. 

And  what  was  He?  Plainly  for  such  as  had  faith  like 
the  paralytic  and  his  friends  He  was  the  bearer  of  God's 
salvation:  the  power  of  God  for  man's  deliverance  in 
all  his  sorest  troubles  was  present  in  Him.  To  refer 
again  to  Matt.  11 5  (2)  we  see  Him  here  doing  'the  works 
of  the  Christ.'  And  here  comes  in  another  point  of  in- 
terest in  the  narrative.  It  contains,  in  the  lips  of  Jesus 
Himself,  what  we  have  already  seen  to  be  a  Messianic  or 
quasi-Messianic  title — the  Son  of  Man:  'That  ye  may 
know  that  the  Son  of  Man  hath  power  upon  earth  to 
forgive  sins,  He  saith  to  the  sick  of  the  palsy,  Arise,  take 
up  thy  bed  and  go  to  thy  house.'  It  has  come  to  be 
taken  for  granted  with  a  certain  school  of  critics  that 
there  must  be  a  mistake  here.  The  Son  of  Man,  it  is 
argued,  just  because  it  is  a  Messianic  title,  could  not  be 
used  by  Jesus  openly  and  at  this  early  stage.  If  we  ex- 
cept this  instance,  and  another  in  ver.  28  of  this  chapter, 
Jesus  never  uses  it  in  Mark  till  after  Peter  has  confessed 
Him  to  be  the  Christ  at  Caesarea  Philippi  (ch.  829),  and 
even  then  the  disciples  are  commanded  to  keep  the  Mes- 
siahship  a  secret.  This,  it  is  assumed,  answers  to  the  ac- 
tual course  of  events.  Further,  what  logic  requires  (it  is 
said),  both  here  and  at  verse  28,  is  not  'the  Son  of  Man' 
but  'man'  simply.  The  Pharisees  say,  Who  can  forgive 
18 


274  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

sins  but  God  only?  and  Jesus  is  supposed  to  answer,  I 
will  prove  to  you  that  not  only  God  in  heaven  but  man 
upon  earth  has  power  to  forgive.  This  is  supported  by 
the  close  of  the  parallel  passage  in  Matthew  (9 8) :  They 
glorified  God  who  had  given  such  power  to  men — that 
is,  to  beings  of  the  class  to  which  Jesus  belonged.  The 
elimination  of  the  Son  of  Man  from  verse  28  is  equally 
plausible.  Logic  seems  thoroughly  satisfied  when  we 
read,  The  Sabbath  was  made  for  man,  not  man  for  the 
Sabbath;  wherefore  man  is  lord  also  of  the  Sabbath. 
The  introduction  of  the  Son  of  Man  into  these  narratives 
is  ascribed  to  mistranslation.  In  Aramaic,  the  language 
of  Jesus,  a  human  being  was  spoken  of  as  a  son  of  man; 
and  some  misapprehension  of  this  Semitic  idiom  led  to 
the  Son  of  Man  being  introduced  here  instead  of  the 
generic  term  expressing  humanity.  The  mistake  mars 
the  logic  of  the  passage,  and  is  inconsistent  with  what 
the  evangelist  elsewhere  tells  us  of  the  time  and  circum- 
stances under  which  Jesus  did  speak  of  Himself  as 
the  Christ,  but  happily  we  are  able  to  correct  and  ex- 
plain it. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  this  explanation  and  correc- 
tion have  become  almost  a  tradition  of  criticism,  the 
writer  has  no  hesitation  in  accepting  the  gospel  narrative 
as  it  stands.  No  part  of  the  process  by  which  'the  Son 
of  Man'  is  eliminated  can  stand  scrutiny.  The  expres- 
sion is  said  to  be  due  to  mistranslation  of  an  Aramaic 
document  in  which  'son  of  man'  occurred  in  the  sense 
of  'human  being.'  To  say  so  is  surely  to  forget  that  the 
contents  of  the  gospel  history  did  not  circulate  in  the 
Church  merely  in  the  form  of  one  man's  translation 
of  an  Aramaic  document.  Granting  that  Mark  could 
make  the  kind  of  mistake  which  is  here  supposed,  we 
must  remember  that  the  story  which  we  know  only  through 
him  must  have  been  known  to  multitudes  of  Christians 


JESUS  FORGIVING  SINS  275 

before  he  wrote;  and  if  they  all  knew  it  in  the  true  form — 
which  ex  hypothesi  they  must  have  done,  as  the  mistake 
originated  with  him — it  is  inconceivable  that  there  should 
be  no  trace  of  the  true  form  left,  and  no  indication  of  any 
attempt  to  correct  Mark.  The  text  of  the  gospels  was 
not  sacrosanct  in  early  times.  Matthew  and  Luke,  who 
can  both  be  shown  to  have  used  Aramaic  documents 
independently,1  no  doubt  follow  Mark  closely  at  this  point; 
but  even  if  they  follow  him  also  unthinkingly,  we  are  safe 
to  say  that  all  three  tell  the  story  in  the  only  form  in  which 
it  could  be  told  to  the  apostolic  Church,  a  form  which  had 
the  apostolic  testimony  behind  it,  and  which  could  not 
have  been  modified  for  the  whole  Church,  at  an  essential 
point,  by  the  mistranslation  of  any  person  whatever. 

Further,  the  displacement  of  'the  Son  of  Man'  -by 
'man'  has  only  a  superficial  plausibility  in  logic.  The 
healing  of  the  palsy  by  Jesus  does  not  prove  that  man 
generically  can  forgive  sins.  The  man  who  does  the 
visible  miracle  in  confirmation  of  his  claim  to  do  the 
invisible  is  to  be  taken  at  his  word:  but  it  is  no  more 
true  that  man  generically  can  speak  the  word  of  forgive- 
ness with  divine  effect  than  that  man  generically  can 
effectively  bid  the  lame  walk.  The  only  question  raised, 
and  the  only  question  settled,  is  one  concerning  the  power 
claimed  by  Jesus;  and  it  is  settled,  not  by  bringing  Jesus 
under  the  general  category  of  humanity,  but  by  an  act 
of  Jesus  Himself  which  was  as  impossible  for  men  in 
general  as  the  forgiveness  of  sins.  It  is  not  any  man,  but 
only  He  who  has  the  right  to  think  of  Himself  as  the 
Son  of  Man,  who  can  forgive  sins  upon  the  earth.  This 
is  all  that  is  covered  by  the  healing  of  the  paralytic.  Mu- 
tatis mutandis,  the  same  considerations  apply  to  the  pas- 
sage about  man  and  the  Sabbath. 

But  this  is  not  all.     The  passage  with  which  we  are 

'  See  Wellhausen's  notes  on  Luke  6  23i  n  a. 


276  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

dealing  is  the  first  in  the  gospel  in  which  Jesus  is  directly 
challenged  while  engaged  in  His  vocation.  He  is  doing 
the  very  work  which  He  has  come  to  do — revealing  Him- 
self in  His  proper  character  as  the  Person  in  whom  God 
has  visited  men  for  their  deliverance  from  sin  and  misery — 
when  His  authority  is  called  in  question.  He  is  in  truth 
the  representative  of  God,  but  the  suggestion  is  made 
that  so  far  from  representing  He  blasphemes,  invading 
impiously  a  prerogative  reserved  for  God  alone.  Are 
not  the  circumstances  fitted  to  evoke  such  a  kind  of  self- 
assertion  as  is  found  in  the  use  here  of  the  title  'Son  of 
Man'?  It  is  no  doubt  a  Messianic  or  quasi-Messianic 
title,  but  it  is  not  simply  equivalent  to  the  Christ.  The 
Messiah  whom  it  suggests  is  not  any  Messiah — is  not, 
for  example,  the  Messiah  of  national  and  political  hopes 
— but  a  transcendent  person  of  some  kind;  one  through 
whom  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  to  triumph,  of  course,  but 
one  whose  very  name  emphasises  humanity  as  opposed 
to  brutality.  It  is  in  keeping  with  the  character  of  such 
a  Messiah  that  He  should  wish  to  forgive  sins  and  heal 
diseases;  it  is  in  keeping  with  Jesus'  consciousness  of  being 
such  a  Messiah  that  He  should  have  and  exercise  both 
these  divine  and  gracious  powers.  We  have  seen  already 
how  Jesus  employs  the  title  Son  of  Man  on  occasions 
where  His  humanity,  in  the  ethical  sense,  is  to  be  empha- 
sised (see  p.  256  f.) ;  and  it  is  this  which  in  the  first  instance 
is  to  be  kept  in  view  here.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  is 
mainly  used — in  agreement  with  its  source  in  Daniel  7  13 — 
in  eschatological  passages,  it  is  not  exclusively  eschatolog- 
ical  in  import.  It  is  the  name  which  describes  Jesus  in 
His  vocation  as  the  Person  through  whom  the  Kingdom 
of  God  is  established,  and  it  indicates  that  the  Kingdom 
of  God  is  at  the  same  time  the  Kingdom  of  humanity,  the 
condition  of  things  in  which  man  is  redeemed  from  the  tyr- 
anny of  brutal  forces,  and  all  humane  ideals  are  realised. 


JESUS  FORGIVING  SINS  277 

It  is  relative  to  the  Kingdom  of  God,  just  as  the  Son,  sim- 
pliciter,  is  relative  to  the  Father;  but  the  Kingdom  of 
God  to  which  it  is  relative  is  a  kingdom  of  grace  in  which 
men  are  forgiven  all  their  iniquities  and  healed  of  all 
their  diseases.  Hence  Jesus  frequently  uses  the  title  Son  of 
Man  when  He  wishes  to  speak  of  Himself  in  the  light  of 
His  vocation,  as  the  Person  doing  the  works  that  belong 
to  the  establishment  of  such  a  kingdom.  'The  Son  of 
Man  came  to  seek  and  to  save  that  which  was  lost.'  'The 
Son  of  Man  came,  not  to  be  ministered  unto  but  to  minis- 
ter, and  to  give  His  life  a  ransom  for  many.'  'The 
Son  of  Man  hath  power  upon  earth  to  forgive  sins.'  The 
name  as  used  here  is  in  keeping  with  Jesus'  use  of  it  on 
these  other  occasions,  and  it  is  thoroughly  appropriate. 
But  to  displace  it  by  'man'  is  to  introduce  what  is  not 
only  unexampled  elsewhere  in  Scripture,  but  in  itself 
inept  and  untrue.  Accepting,  therefore,  the  evangelic 
record  of  Jesus'  words  at  this  point,  we  find  in  them  an 
indication,  belonging  to  the  earliest  period  of  His  min- 
istry, that  He  lived  and  worked  in  the  consciousness  of  a 
relation  to  God  and  to  the  bringing  in  of  His  reign  among 
men  which  can  have  belonged  to  Him  alone — such  a 
relation,  in  short,  as  makes  Him  not  the  pattern  of  good- 
ness merely,  but  the  object  of  religious  faith  to  all  who 
look  for  salvation  in  the  coming  of  God's  Kingdom. 
Now  this,  as  we  have  repeatedly  seen,  is  the  attitude  of 
Christian  faith  to  Christ,  and  therefore  we  conclude  once 
more  that  such  faith  is  justified  by  Jesus'  consciousness 
of  Himself. 

Before  leaving  this  passage  it  is  proper  to  remark  on 
the  reference  in  it  to  faith.  'When  He  saw  their  faith 
Jesus  said  to  the  paralytic,  Child,  thy  sins  are  forgiven.' 
The  faith  meant  is  that  of  the  paralytic  and  his  friends: 
their  assurance  that  help  could  be  had  from  Jesus  was 
so  great  that  they  overcame  every  obstacle  in  order  to 


278  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

reach  Him.  Per  omnia  fides  ad  Christum  penetrat. 
The  power  that  brings  man  help  is,  of  course,  in  every 
case  ultimately  the  power  of  God,  and  therefore  in  a 
true  sense  God  is  always  the  object  of  faith;  but  the 
point  here  is  that  God's  power  to  help  is  present  in  Jesus; 
it  is  mediated  through  Him  and  through  Him  alone, 
and  hence  He  also  becomes,  as  no  other  can  be,  the  object 
of  faith.  This  is  the  one  attitude  to  Him  which  the  New 
Testament  discovers,  and  quite  apart  from  this  or  that 
word  in  which  He  revealed  His  own  expectation  or  de- 
mand, it  is  inconceivable  that  this  attitude  should  have 
been  mistaken.  It  was  evoked  by  Jesus  as  the  reality 
of  what  He  was  and  did  impressed  itself  on  those  who 
were  in  contact  with  Him.  The  Jesus  to  whom  the  New 
Testament  bears  witness  evokes  the  same  attitude  still. 
But  if  it  needed  more  explicit  justification,  that  justifica- 
tion would  be  found  in  the  many  striking  words  of  Jesus 
about  faith.  He  says  to  suppliants  for  help,  'Believe  ye 
that  I  am  able  to  do  this?'  He  says  to  the  woman  who 
was  healed  by  touching  the  hem  of  His  garment,  'Thy 
faith  hath  saved  thee. '  He  says  to  Jairus,  when  news  is 
brought  that  his  daughter  is  dead,  'Be  not  afraid,  only 
believe.'  The  faith  that  He  claims  in  this  last  instance 
is  the  utmost  reach  of  faith  which  can  be  demanded  from 
man.  The  great  enemy  of  faith  is  death.  We  can  keep 
hold  of  God,  and  hope  for  His  help,  as  long  as  there  is  life; 
but  death  seems  to  end  all.  Yet  even  in  the  presence 
of  death  Jesus  says,  Fear  not,  only  have  faith.  The 
words  have  no  relevance  at  all  unless  they  mean  that 
the  saving  help  of  God  which  is  present  in  Jesus  is  stronger 
even  than  death,  so  that  he  who  believes  in  Him  can 
defy  the  last  enemy.  A  recent  commentator  on  Mark  l 
says  that  the  only  thing  in  this  narrative  which  speaks 
to  us  with  living  and  personal  power  is  the  faith  of  Jesus — 

1  J.  Weiss,  Die  Schriften  des  Neuen  Testaments,  i.  118;  also  p.  46. 


THE  BRIDEGROOM  279 

His  confidence  that  the  Father  would  go  with  Him  to  the 
ruler's  house  and  enable  Him  to  meet  whatever  emer- 
gency there  was;  but  surely  the  demand  of  Jesus  that  in 
the  very  presence  of  death  Jairus  should  not  renounce 
hope,  but  believe  that  the  power  of  God  to  be  exercised 
through  Him  would  be  equal  to  any  extremity  of  need,  is 
quite  as  remarkable.  What  Jesus  requires  is  not  that 
Jairus  should  directly  exhibit  the  same  faith  in  God  as 
He  Himself  did— a  faith  at  which  the  commentator  re- 
ferred to  can  only  hold  up  his  hands  in  blank  bewilderment 
—but  that  in  His  company,  and  relying  on  what  God  would 
do  through  Him,  he  should  not  despair.  The  help  of  God 
for  the  man  was  to  be  mediated  through  Jesus,  and  through 
Jesus  also  the  faith  of  the  man  in  God  was  to  be  mediated. 
There  is  no  other  relation  of  God's  help  to'  man,  or  of 
man's  faith  in  God,  known  either  to  the  gospels  or  the  epis- 
tles in  the  New  Testament;  and  we  repeat,  it  is  incon- 
ceivable that  at  this  vital  point  the  convictions  and  ex- 
periences evoked  by  Jesus  should  have  been  at  variance 
with  the  mind  of  Jesus  Himself. 

The   Bridegroom   and   the   Children  of   the 
Bridechamber 

(Mark  2  18"2°) 

One  of  the  passages  in  Mark  which  would  formerly 
have  been  pointed  to  without  hesitation  as  indicating  the 
peculiar  self-consciousness  of  Jesus  is  that  in  which  He 
answers  a  question  about  fasting.  '  Why  do  the  disciples 
of  John  and  the  disciples  of  the  Pharisees  fast,  but  Thy 
disciples  fast  not?  And  Jesus  said  to  them,  Can  the 
children  of  the  bridechamber  fast  while  the  Bridegroom 
is  with  them  ?  As  long  as  they  have  the  Bridegroom  with 
them  they  cannot  fast.  But  days  will  come  when  the 
Bridegroom  shall  be  taken  away  from  them,  and  then 
shall  they  fast  in  that  day'   (Mark  2  18'20).     Originally, 


28o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

only  the  last  verse  of  this  was  questioned.  Jesus,  it  was 
said,  did  not  at  this  early  period  anticipate  His  own  death, 
and  He  certainly  did  not  begin  to  speak  of  it  to  His  dis- 
ciples till  much  later.1  Further,  the  mention  of  His 
death  is  irrelevant:  all  that  it  is  necessary  to  say  is,  'Can 
the  children  of  the  bridechamber  fast  as  long  as  the  Bride- 
groom is  with  them  ?  My  disciples  and  I  are  a  wedding 
party,  and  therefore  fasting  is  out  of  place. '  But  a  more 
penetrating  application  of  this  same  kind  of  criticism 
carries  us  further.  The  inventive  evangelist  who  added 
verse  20  from  his  own  resources  has  been  severely  lectured 
for  perverting  the  parabolic  saying  in  verse  19  into  allegory, 
and  then  continuing  the  allegory  mechanically  in  verse 
20,  on  the  line  of  the  history  of  Jesus  and  His  Church. 
But  there  is  something  to  be  said  for  him,  nevertheless. 
What  is  the  tertium  comparationis  which  would  make  it 
possible  for  Jesus  to  compare  His  disciples  to  guests  at 
a  wedding,  for  whom  fasting  would  be  out  of  place?  It 
neither  is  nor  can  be  anything  else  than  the  conception 
of  Jesus  Himself  as  the  Bridegroom.  But  this  is  an 
allegorical  conception.2  To  suppose  that  Jesus  spoke  of 
Himself  as  a  Bridegroom,  or  as  the  Bridegroom,  is  to 
suppose  that  He  had  recourse  to  allegory — a  supposition 
which  is  nothing  short  of  distressing  to  many  honourable 
men.  Hence  we  are  rather  to  suppose  that  the  whole 
passage  is  due  to  the  productive  activity  of  the  Church. 
Jesus  really  had  no  part  in  it.  The  transaction  which  it 
perpetuates  was  not  one  which  took  place  between  John 
and  Jesus,  but  between  the  disciples  of  the  two  Masters. 
It  has  no  meaning  for  the  time  to  which  it  is  said  to 
belong,   but  only  for  the  future.     After  Jesus  died,  His 

1  The  Death  oj  Christ,  p.  23  f. 

2  Wellhausen,  Das  Evangelium  Marci,  p.  20:  '  Es  schimmert  also  schon 
in  2  i»  der  allegorische  Sinn  durch  (auch  in  dem  Ausdruck  so  lange  der 
Brtiutigam  bet  ihnen  ist  statt  wahrend  der  Hochzeit),  und  man  darf  2  20 
nicht  davon  abschneiden.' 


THE   BRIDEGROOM  281 

disciples  departed  from  His  practice.  They  took  over 
from  John's  disciples  not  only  baptism  but  prayer  (Luke 
11  *)  and  fasting.  Jesus  is  here  represented  as  giving 
them  permission  for  the  fasting,  though  a  permission 
that  only  comes  into  effect  after  His  death.1 

All  this,  we  have  no  hesitation  in  saying,  is  as  dull  as 
it  is  gratuitous.  No  one  denies  that  there  were  in  the 
lifetime  of  Jesus  followers  of  John  and  Pharisees  as  well 
as  disciples  of  Jesus  Himself.  They  represented  dif- 
ferent types  of  religion,  in  spirit  and  observance,  and 
the  differences  between  them  were  both  reflected  on  by 
Jesus  independently,  and  discussed  by  their  adherents. 
There  is  a  notable  word  of  Jesus  about  fasting  in  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  (Matt.  6  16  ff) ;  in  Matt.  11 2"19,  and 
in  the  parallel  passages  in  Luke,  Jesus  expressly  com- 
pares Himself  and  John  as  religious  leaders,  and  points 
the  difference  between  them  in  the  very  sense  of  this 
passage;  and  He  frequently  came  into  collision  with  the 
representatives  of  Pharisaism  on  ritual  observances  of 
an  analogous  character  (v.  Mark  7  *  ff-,  Matt.  15  *  ff).  It 
is  simply  a  mistake,  therefore,  to  say  with  Wellhausen 
that  the  subject  has  no  significance  for  the  time  at  which 
it  is  introduced,  but  only  for  the  future:  the  subject  is  one 
of  a  class  which  was  undoubtedly  discussed  by  Jesus 
oftener  than  once  or  twice.  But  if  we  recognise  this,  it 
will  not  be  without  influence  on  our  interpretation  and 
appreciation  of  the  passage  as  a  whole.  If  Jesus  is  the 
Speaker,  His  words  must  be  something  else  than  the 
legitimation  of  the  practice  of  the  early  Church  as  to 
fasting,  in  contrast  with  the  practice  of  the  disciples  in 
His  lifetime.  Nothing  is  less  credible  in  the  lips  of  Jesus 
than  such  artificial  and  prosaic  legalism.  But  the  words 
cease  to  be  legal  and  prosaic,  they  become  personal  and 
inspired,  poetic  and  moving,  above  the  common  measure 

1  All  this  is  borrowed  from  Wellhausen  as  above. 


282  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

even  of  the  words  of  Jesus,  provided  we  admit  the  possibil- 
ity that  Jesus  could  speak  of  Himself  as  the  Bridegroom. 
And  why  should  it  be  impossible  ?  It  is  the  same  thought 
which  meets  us  again  in  the  parable — with  allegoric  traits 
in  it  no  doubt,  but  why  not? — of  the  king  who  makes  a 
marriage  for  his  son  (Matt.  22 2).  It  has  echoes  in 
Eph.  5  25  ff>  and  in  Rev.  19  9,  21 9.  It  has  antecedents  in  the 
Old  Testament  conception  of  God's  relation  to  Israel. 
Certainly  it  is  an  extraordinary  thing  that  Jesus  should 
have  conceived  in  this  way  His  relation  to  the  new  people 
of  God  which  was  gathering  round  Him,  but  everything 
in  Jesus  is  extraordinary.  After  the  incident  and  the 
self-revelation  of  verses  1  to  12,  we  do  not  expect  platitude 
or  commonplace  here;  and  the  sense  which  Wellhausen 
extracts  is  poorer  than  platitude  or  commonplace.  With 
the  Bridegroom  among  them,  the  disciples  can  fairly  be 
compared  to  a  marriage  party  in  which  fasting  would  be 
incongruous;  and  what  can  be  truer  to  nature  than  that 
the  Bridegroom,  even  while  he  defends  their  joyousness, 
should  become  sensible,  in  the  very  disposition  of  those 
who  question  it,  of  that  suspicion  and  malignity  toward 
Himself  which  would  one  day  end  in  murder,  and  turn 
the  joy  of  the  bridal  party  into  a  sorrow  in  which  fasting 
would  be  sadly  spontaneous?  The  unity,  the  inner 
truth  and  the  poetic  charm  of  the  whole  utterance  are 
indisputable,  unless  we  deny  that  Jesus  could  think  of 
Himself  as  the  Bridegroom;  and  for  such  a  denial  there  is 
no  ground  except  that  it  implies  a  consciousness  on  Jesus' 
part  of  Himself  and  of  His  place  in  God's  work  which 
men  are  resolved,  on  grounds  with  which  historical  criti- 
cism has  nothing  to  do,  not  to  recognise.  As  it  stands, 
the  revelation  which  it  makes  of  Jesus  is  in  harmony 
with  everything  which  has  hitherto  been  presented  to  us 
in  the  record,  and  we  need  have  no  hesitation  in  replying 
on  it  as  true.   , 


THE  UNPARDONABLE   SIN  283 

The  Unpardonable  Sin  :  Mark  3  28~30 

(Matt.  12  M32,  Luke  12  10) 

We  have  already  examined,  in  the  source  common  to 
Matthew  and  Luke,  the  words  of  Jesus  about  a  sin  for 
which  there  is  no  forgiveness.  The  saying  on  this  subject 
in  Mark,  though  it  differs  by  not  mentioning  the  Son  of 
Man,  throws  an  equally  striking  light  on  Jesus'  con- 
sciousness of  Himself.  It  is  pronounced  with  a  solemn 
assurance  of  its  truth.  'Verily  I  say  unto  you  that  all 
things  shall  be  forgiven  to  the  sons  of  men,  the  sins  and 
the  blasphemies  wherewithsoever  they  have  blasphemed. 
But  whoso  shall  have  blasphemed  against  the  Holy  Spirit 
hath  not  forgiveness  for  ever,  but  is  guilty  of  an  eternal 
sin.'  How  is  this  sin  committed?  The  Holy  Spirit  is 
that  divine  power  which  is  manifested  in  Jesus  as  He 
casts  out  evil  spirits;  it  is  not  something  distinct  from 
Him  and  to  be  contrasted  with  Him;  it  is  simply  God 
acting  through  Him  for  the  deliverance  of  men  from 
Satan.  There  are  cases  in  which  God  acts,  as  it  were, 
from  behind  a  screen,  and  it  is  possible  not  to  recognise 
Him,  and  to  sin  or  blaspheme  inadvertently  and  there- 
fore pardonably;  but  in  the  case  before  us  it  is  different. 
The  works  that  Jesus  did  were  so  palpably  the  works 
of  God,  the  operations  of  His  holy  redeeming  power, 
that  inadvertent  failure  to  recognise  them  for  what  they 
were  was  impossible.  The  dullest  spectator  was  bound 
to  say,  as  the  magicians  of  Egypt  did  of  Moses,  This  is 
the  finger  of  God  (Ex.  8  19,  Luke  n  20) :  nothing  but  the 
blackest  malignity  could  whisper,  He  has  an  unclean 
spirit,  He  casts  out  demons  by  Beelzebub.  Nothing 
could  more  convincingly  show  how  entirely  Jesus  identifies 
Himself  with  the  cause  of  God  and  His  Kingdom.  That 
absolute  significance  of  his  Person  and  His  work  to  which 
reference  has  been  so  frequently  made   already  is  the 


284  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

fundamental  idea  here  also.  The  solemnity  and  vehe- 
mence with  which  He  speaks — 'hath  not  forgiveness  for 
ever,' '  is  guilty  of  an  eternal  sin' — reminds  us  of  the  words 
in  which  He  pronounces  woes  on  the  impenitent  cities 
('  it  shall  be  more  tolerable  for  Tyre  and  Sidon,  for  Sodom 
and  Gomorrah,  in  the  day  of  judgment  than  for  you'), 
or  of  the  awful  warning  to  whoso  shall  deny  Him  before 
men  ('  him  will  I  also  deny  before  My  Father  which  is  in 
heaven').  The  cure  of  demoniacs  had  a  peculiar  value 
for  Jesus  as  a  demonstration  that  God 's  victory  over  Satan 
was  actually  in  process  of  accomplishment,  that  the  King- 
dom of  God,  if  one  might  dare  to  say  it,  was  no  longer  a 
thing  to  be  waited  for,  but  had  come  to  men  while  as  yet 
they  did  not  realise  it  (Matt.  1 2  28) ;  but  the  victory  of  God 
and  the  coming  of  His  Kingdom  are  identified  with  Jesus 
and  His  work.  They  are  mediated  for  the  world  through 
Him,  and  it  is  because  things  so  great  are  mediated 
through  Him  that  unpardonable  guilt  attaches  to  those 
who  slanderously  misinterpret  what  He  does.  One 
may  be  excused  if  he  hesitates  between  the  forms  in 
which  Jesus'  saying  has  been  preserved  by  Mark  and  by 
the  other  early  source,  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  in  either 
form  the  divine  power  of  God  at  work  for  the  redemption 
of  men  is  identified  with  Jesus  in  His  own  words.  In 
His  own  mind— we  have  the  most  solemn  assurance  of 
it — He  had  the  same  place  as  the  Mediator  of  God's 
salvation  which  He  has  always  had  in  Christian  faith. 

The  Messiah  and  the  Cross 

(Mark  8  27-io  u) 

Such  passages  as  those  we  have  just  examined  reveal 
or  rather  betray  the  consciousness  of  Jesus  as  to  His 
place  in  the  world,  and  in  the  working  out  of  God's 
purposes  towards  men.  What  He  is,  however,  cannot 
be  told,  unless  it  has  been  in  a  sense  discovered.     The 


THE  MESSIAH  AND  THE  CROSS         285 

impression  which  He  made  on  those  who  were  in  close 
contact  with  Him — the  impression  produced  not  by  ex- 
plicit words  only,  but  by  His  life  as  a  whole,  and  especially 
by  the  attitude  He  assumed  towards  them  and  expected 
from  them — this  impression,  especially  if  He  confirmed 
it,  is  an  important  part  of  the  revelation  of  what  He 
was.  Scholars  generally  have  agreed  that  in  the  gospel 
according  to  Mark  there  is  a  historical  sequence  trace- 
able, in  a  large  way,  which  is  less  evident  in  the  later  gospels. 
At  first  Jesus  works  among  His  own  people,  and  at  first, 
too,  not  without  response.  His  mighty  works  naturally 
excited  enthusiasm.  Such  as  it  was,  this  enthusiasm 
seems  to  have  reached  high-water  mark  in  the  feeding  of 
the  five  thousand,  and  from  that  time  forward  it  ebbed. 
The  feeding  of  the  five  thousand  has  greatly  exercised 
those  who  cannot  believe  in  it,  and  the  most  various  at- 
tempts have  been  made  to  rationalise  it  and  get  rid  of  the 
miracle.  Either  it  is  said  the  miracle  was  a  spiritual  one — 
Jesus,  to  speak  in  the  language  of  the  fourth  gospel, 
fed  the  multitudes  with  the  bread  of  life,  the  word  of 
His  teaching;  or  He  and  His  disciples,  sharing  their 
scanty  store  of  provisions  with  the  crowd,  prompted 
others  to  follow  their  generous  example,  and  drew  forth 
more  than  enough  for  all.  Such  explanations  fail  to  do 
justice  to  the  fact  that,  according  to  all  our  records,  the 
feeding  of  the  five  thousand  produced  an  immense  excite- 
ment from  which  Jesus  and  the  disciples  found  it  necessary 
but  hard  to  make  their  escape.  Jesus  compelled  the 
Twelve,  who  no  doubt  shared  the  popular  enthusiasm, 
to  go  out  to  sea  and  face  a  rising  storm  rather  than  founder 
in  this  spiritual  whirlwind;  and  He  Himself  retired  to 
the   mountain   to   pray    (Mark   645f).1     He  deliberately 

1  The  account  given  in  the  fourth  gospel  of  the  feeding  of  the  multi- 
tudes has  many  features  which  suggest  that  it  came  from  an_ eye-witness. 
Incidentally  it  explains  the  otherwise  perplexing  word  yvaynaoEv  in 
Mark  6  45  and  I  Matthew.    The  multitudes  wanted,  in  the  enthusiasm  of 


286  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

refused  to  enlist  under  the  banner  of  Jewish  expectations, 
and  from  this  time  forward  the  breach  between  Him  and 
His  countrymen  widens.  A  little  later,  apparently,  there 
is  a  decisive  rupture  with  the  recognised  religious  authori- 
ties about  the  traditions  of  the  elders,  and  He  retires  with 
the  Twelve  into  the  country  north  of  Galilee  (Mark  7  »  ff>). 
So  far,  it  may  be  said,  He  has  failed  to  make  on  the  peo- 
ple the  impression  He  desired,  and  His  interest  is  hence- 
forth concentrated  on  the  few  who  have  been  more  inti- 
mately related  to  Him.  Have  they  penetrated  His  secret? 
Are  they  able  to  take  Him  for  what  He  is  in  His  own 
estimation,  and  so  to  continue  His  work  in  His  own  sense  ? 
This  is  the  decisive  question  with  which  we  are  con- 
fronted at  the  beginning  of  what  Wellhausen  has  de- 
scribed as  the  Christian  section  of  the  gospel  of  Mark: 
'And  Jesus  went  forth,  and  His  disciples,  into  the  vil- 
lages of  Caesarea  Philippi:  and  in  the  way  He  asked 
His  disciples,  saying  unto  them,  Who  do  men  say  that 
I  am?  And  they  told  Him,  saying,  John  the  Baptist; 
and  others,  Elijah;  but  others,  one  of  the  prophets.  And 
He  asked  them,  But  who  say  ye  that  I  am?  Peter  an- 
swereth  and  saith  unto  Him,  Thou  art  the  Christ.  And 
He  charged  them  that  they  should  tell  no  man  of  Him' 
(Mark  827ff).  We  have  seen  already  that  the  unique 
self-consciousness   of    Jesus,    which    is   divinely   assured 

the  moment,  to  take  Jesus  by  force  and  make  Him  a  king.  The  disciples, 
whose  hopes  were  still  in  many  respects  like  those  of  the  multitudes, 
were  only  too  ready  to  fall  in  with  this  revolutionary  movement,  and  it 
was  against  their  will  that  Jesus  compelled  them  to  start  for  the  other  side. 
For  Him  personally  it  meant  the  recurrence  of  the  temptations  in  the 
wilderness:  all  three  of  them  can  easily  be  discerned  in  the  narrative. 
His  own  sense  of  this  would  be  marked  by  His  withdrawal  to  the  moun- 
tain to  pray — His  flight  ((pevyei.)  as  some  ancient  authorities  read  in 
John  6  15.  The  way  in  which  the  fourth  gospel  explains  Mark  at  this 
point  supports  the  accuracy  of  both,  and  makes  it  impossible  to  reduce 
the  feeding  of  the  five  thousand  to  an  improvised  picnic.  Whether  we 
can  explain  it  or  not,  it  was  an  extraordinary  event  of  some  kind,  agitating 
in  its  immediate  circumstances  for  all  concerned,  and  a  turning-point 
in  the  history  of  Jesus  and  in  His  relations  with  His  people. 


THE  MESSIAH  AND  THE  CROSS        287 

from  the  baptism  onward,  breaks  forth  at  intervals 
in  Mark,  especially  when  His  authority  or  His  work  is 
challenged:  here  we  see  that  it  is  an  interest  to  Jesus 
Himself,  that  He  has  reflected  on  what  He  is,  and  is  con- 
cerned that  men  should  apprehend  Him  truly.  The 
question,  it  might  almost  be  said,  is  more  significant  than 
the  answers.  Jesus  is  not  only  conscious  that  He  is  a 
problem  to  men,  He  assumes  that  He  ought  to  be.  It  is 
not  right  that  people  should  be  indifferent  to  Him,  should 
never  give  Him  a  thought,  or  should  dispose  of  Him  sum- 
marily by  saying  that  of  course  He  is  what  other  people 
are,  and  that  no  more  need  be  said.  To  His  mind,  evi- 
dently, there  can  be  nothing  so  important  as  that  men 
should  have  received  a  true  impression  of  Him,  should 
think  of  Him  as  He  thinks  of  Himself,  and  in  their  attitude 
to  Him  respond  to  what  He  knows  Himself  to  be. 

The  opinions  of  the  people  are  of  little  interest  except 
as  showing  that  no  one  regarded  Jesus  as  a  commonplace 
person.  Every  one  recognised  in  Him  a  divine  messenger 
of  some  kind — the  Baptist  returned  from  the  dead;  Elijah, 
the  promised  forerunner  of  the  Messiah;  or  an  ordinary 
prophet — one  of  those  who  appeared  long  ago.  These 
are,  without  exception,  the  opinions  of  people  who  can 
hardly  have  known  Jesus  at  all.  No  one  who  had  been 
in  His  company  could  imagine  that  He  was  any  one 
redivivus,  any  one  but  Himself.  He  was  not  the  reani- 
mation  of  any  dead  past,  but  an  absolutely  living  Person, 
with  His  hand  on  the  present  and  the  future.  When  He 
turns  to  the  Twelve,  whom  He  had  chosen  that  they  might 
be  with  Him  (3  14),  and  so  come  to  know  Him  truly,  and 
asks  them,  But  you,  who  do  you  say  that  I  am?  He  gets 
an  answer  which  does  justice  at  least  to  this  difference. 
Peter,  expressing  apparently  the  faith  or  the  conviction 
of  all,  says  to  Him,  Thou  art  the  Christ. 

We  cannot  tell  all  the  thoughts  and  hopes  which  gath- 


288  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

ered  round  this  designation  for  Peter  and  his  comrades. 
At  the  very  lowest,  to  call  Jesus  Christ  was  to  call  Him 
King;  it  was  to  recognise  in  Him  the  Person  through 
whom  God's  sovereignty  was  to  be  established,  and  God's 
promises  to  His  people  fulfilled.  But  it  might  be  used  by 
men  whose  conceptions  of  the  nature  of  that  sovereignty, 
and  of  the  processes  by  which  it  was  to  be  established, 
were  inconsistent,  defective,  or  obscure.  Peter  might  have 
the  assurance  that  he  must  owe  to  Jesus  all  that  God  was 
going  to  do  for  Israel  or  for  the  human  race,  and  in  the 
strength  of  that  assurance  he  might  call  Him  the  Christ, 
while  yet  he  remained  much  mistaken  as  to  what  God  was 
going  to  do,  or  how  it  was  going  to  be  done.  What  is 
properly  implied  in  ascribing  to  Jesus  the  title  of  'the 
Christ'  is  a  certain  attitude  of  soul  to  Him,  the  recogni- 
tion in  Him  of  the  King  through  whom  the  blessings 
of  the  heavenly  kingdom  are  to  be  mediated  to  men,  the 
acknowledgment  of  His  claim  to  absolute  loyalty  and 
obedience;  that  is  all.  We  do  not  mean  that  this  all  is 
little;  on  the  contrary,  it  has  been  and  remains  the  essence 
of  the  Christian  faith.  But  it  is  quite  compatible  with 
much  ignorance  and  misconception  as  to  the  Kingdom 
of  God;  and  when  we  consider  the  fanatical  hopes  which 
attached  to  the  name  in  many  Jewish  minds,  we  can  well 
understand  that  while  Jesus  welcomed  in  the  disciples  that 
attitude  to  Himself  which  their  confession  involved, 
He  forbade  them  to  tell  any  one  that  He  was  the  Christ. 
The  truth  there  was  in  their  confession — the  spiritual 
truth  involved  in  their  loyalty  to  Jesus  and  their  assurance 
that  all  divine  blessings  would  be  mediated  to  them  through 
Him — is  a  truth  which  literally  cannot  be  conveyed  by 
telling;  it  can  only  be  realised  in  the  experience  of  intimacy 
with  Jesus  like  that  through  which  the  Twelve  them- 
selves learned  it.  To  go  about  saying  to  people  who 
did  not  know  Jesus  that  Jesus  was  the  Christ  was  only 


THE  MESSIAH  AND  THE  CROSS         289 

to  diffuse  misconception.  It  was  to  draw  men  round 
Him  with  passionate  hopes  which  He  knew  could  never 
be  fulfilled.  What  He  found  in  the  attitude  and  hopes 
of  the  Twelve  was  rather  a  basis  on  which  He  could 
proceed  to  initiate  them  further  into  the  truth  of  His 
own  relation  to  the  Kingdom.  They  had  realised  that 
it  was  somehow  identified  with  Him  and  dependent 
upon  Him — this  is  what  is  meant  by  calling  Him  the 
Christ;  its  nature  and  character  were  bound  up  in  His; 
but  they  did  not  yet  understand  what  its  coming  meant 
for  Him.  They  did  not  really  think  of  its  coming,  they 
only  indulged  wild  fantastic  hopes  of  it;  and  it  became 
the  task  of  Jesus  to  discipline  their  thoughts  to  the  ap- 
prehension of  the  stern  moral  realities  of  His  vocation, 
realities  which  for  His  consciousness  were  so  inevitable, 
or  rather  so  divinely  involved  in  His  work. 

It  is  difficult  to  understand  how  this  representation 
should  be  questioned.  The  gospel  according  to  Mark, 
although  it  is  a  gospel,  purports  also  to  be  a  historical 
narrative.  We  have  seen  already  the  evidence  which 
connects  it  with  Peter.  It  is  admitted  by  unprejudiced 
judges  to  have  been  written  at  a  time  at  which  disciples 
of  Jesus  might  well  have  survived.  Wellhausen,  who 
thinks  that  the  section  with  which  we  are  dealing — 
chapter  8 27  to  chapter  10 45 — has  been  pronouncedly 
*  Christianised,'  and  to  that  extent  rendered  unhistorical, 
allows  that  it  is  in  favour  of  Mark,  as  contrasted  with 
what  he  regards  as  a  later  source,  that  the  Christianising 
is  limited  to  this  section.  But  the  fact  that  it  is  limited 
to  a  section  proves  that  it  is  not  'Christianising'  at  all. 
'Christianising'  means  the  transmutation  of  the  facts  in 
the  history  of  Jesus  in  such  a  sense  that  they  shall  support 
(which  of  themselves  they  would  not)  the  later  beliefs  of 
Christians.  But  a  writer  who  sought  the  support  of  Jesus 
for  the  subsequent  faith  of  the  Church  would  not  seek 
19 


29o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

it  only  in  the  last  weeks  or  months  of  His  life.  If  he 
'Christianised'  the  story  he  would  not  be  able  to  do  other- 
wise than  Christianise  it  altogether.  The  occurrence  of 
the  'Christian'  phenomena  in  this  section  of  the  gospel, 
and  in  this  only,  proves  that  we  have  to  do  not  with  any 
dogmatic  transmutation  of  the  facts,  voluntary  or  involun- 
tary, but  with  proper  historical  tradition.  This  is  the  course 
of  Jesus'  life  and  teaching  as  the  witnesses  reported  it. 
It  is  not  the  evangelist,  but  the  criticism  which  accuses  him 
of  'Christianising'  his  story,  which  is  not  historical  but 
dogmatic.  On  grounds  quite  unconnected  with  history, 
it  is  unable  to  give  to  Jesus  the  place  given  to  Him  in  the 
faith  of  New  Testament  Christians,  and  it  is  precluded 
therefore  from  admitting  that  Jesus  can  Himself  have 
assumed  or  claimed  this  place.  But  the  evidence  of  Mark, 
that  after  a  certain  crisis  in  His  career  the  character  of 
Jesus'  ministry  changed,  is  real  historical  evidence,  which 
cannot  on  grounds  like  these  be  treated  as  if  it  did  not 
exist.  Nothing  would  more  surely  remain  in  the  mind  of 
Peter  than  that,  after  the  crisis  referred  to  and  the  con- 
fession of  Jesus  as  the  Christ  on  that  memorable  day  at 
Caesarea  Philippi,  his  Master  had  withdrawn  to  a  large 
extent  from  teaching  in  the  synagogues  or  preaching  to 
the  multitudes  on  the  hill-side  or  by  the  lake  shore,  and 
had  devoted  Himself  more  privately  to  the  training  of  the 
Twelve.  If  Jesus  did  act  in  this  way,  the  difference  would 
be  so  striking  that  it  would  naturally  impress  itself  on  the 
memory,  and  be  reproduced  in  any  narrative  which  was 
at  all  in  contact  with  the  facts.  It  has  been  shown  above 
that  the  gospel  narrative,  which  has  the  historical  support 
of  the  evangelist's  testimony,  has  also  an  inner  consistency 
which  pleads  in  its  favour.  Admitting  that  Jesus  in  His 
lifetime  was  connected  with  the  Messianic  hope  at  all — 
and  the  superscription  on  the  Cross  is  of  itself  a  demon- 
stration that  He  was — it  is  thoroughly  natural  that  He 


THE   MESSIAH  AND  THE   CROSS        291 

should  accept  the  title  from  the  Twelve,  expressive  as  it 
was  of  a  spiritual  attitude  to  Himself  which  He  recognised 
as  His  due,  that  He  should  forbid  them  to  use  it  publicly, 
because  it  was  sure  to  be  misunderstood,  and  that  He 
should  devote  Himself  thenceforth  to  opening  the  minds 
of  the  Twelve  to  a  better  comprehension  of  what  His 
vocation  as  the  Christ  involved.     The  outward  attestation 
and  the  inward  consistency  of  this  are  evidence  of  the 
highest  importance  for  its  truth.     To  say,  in  spite  of  such 
evidence,  that  the  characteristic  ideas  of  Mark  8 27  to  10  45 
do  not  really  belong  to  the  history  of  Jesus,  but  are  the 
reflection  into  His  history  of  the  faith  of  Pauline  Christians, 
who  assumed  that  Jesus  must  have  shared  and  expressed 
their  own  belief  in  His  Messiahship  and  in  His  atoning 
death  and  resurrection,   is  historically  gratuitous.     But 
it  is  worse  than  gratuitous  to  suggest  that  the  allusions 
at  various  points  to  the  secrecy  of  the  teaching,  or  to  the 
want  of  understanding  on  the  part  of  the  disciples  (e.g. 
9  10,  930"32),  are  indications  that  the  writer  who  thus  mis- 
represented the  facts,  knew  what  He  was  doing,  and  felt 
it  necessary  to  apologise  for  it.     He  was  aware  that  Jesus 
in  His  lifetime  never  spoke  any  such  words,  and  that  no 
such  ideas  had  then  been  in  the  disciples'  heads;  but  he 
writes   that   Jesus  did  speak  the  words — only  secretly; 
and  that  the  disciples  did  hear  them — only  they  could  not 
take  them  in.1     Surely  the  presumption  is,  to  put  it  at  the 
lowest,  that  the  evangelist  was  a  rational  and  moral  being, 
and  would  act  accordingly.     In  the  connexion  in  which 
it  stands,  therefore,  and  with  the  historical  support  which 
it  can  claim,  we  do  not  find  it  necessary  to  dispute  Mark's 
representation  of  the  mind  of  Jesus  at  this  stage  in  His 
history,  because  it  implies  a  continuity  between  the  self- 
revelation  of  Jesus  in  His  lifetime  and  the  faith  of  the 
Church  in  Him  after  His  death.     On  the  contrary,  such 

1  See  Wrede's  Das  Messiasgeheimniss  in  den  Evangelien,  passim. 


292  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

a  continuity  seems  as  natural  in  itself  as  it  is  needful  for 
the  understanding  of  the  Christian  religion,  and  is  rather 
to  be  regarded  as  an  indication  that  the  evangelist  is  in 
touch  with  truth.  What  then  is  the  truth  in  regard  to 
Jesus  and  His  vocation  to  which  we  are  introduced  in  this 
section  as  present  to  the  mind  of  Jesus  Himself? 

Speaking  broadly,  it  is  the  truth  that  in  the  Messianic 
calling,  as  Jesus  conceived  it,  and  felt  Himself  bound  to 
fulfil  it,  were  involved  the  death  and  resurrection  of  the 
Messiah.  On  the  three  distinct  occasions  on  which  He 
sought  to  initiate  the  Twelve  into  His  own  thoughts,  these 
are  the  constant  elements  in  His  teaching  (Mark  8 31,  9 31, 
10 33).  He  never,  indeed,  so  far  as  appears,  uses  in  these 
lessons  the  title  of  'the  Christ';  He  speaks  uniformly  of 
the  Son  of  Man.  His  intention  in  this  may  have  been, 
on  the  one  hand,  to  avoid  the  term  which  was  most  heavily 
loaded  with  political  associations;  and  on  the  other,  to 
employ  that  which,  just  because  it  was  transcendent  or 
supermundane,  could  be  more  easily  spiritualised,  and 
which  in  its  very  form  suggested  that  no  experience  of 
man  could  properly  be  alien  to  Him.  Again  and  again 
and  again  during  these  last  weeks  and  months  He  tells 
the  disciples  that  the  Son  of  Man  must  die,  and  after  three 
days  rise  again.  It  is  not  necessary  here  to  consider 
whether  this  or  that  detail  in  these  predictions  of  the 
death  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  may  have  been  added 
ex  eventu  by  Christian  preachers  or  catechists.1  It  is 
quite  conceivable  that  some  touches  in  the  prophetic  pic- 
ture may  have  been  introduced  in  this  way,  but  that  does 
not  affect  the  evangelist's  testimony— and  it  must  be 
repeated  that  it  is  testimony— to  the  fact  that  during  the 
last  period  of  Jesus'  life  His  death  and  resurrection  were 
the  subjects  that  engrossed  His  thoughts.2    The  resur- 

1  See  the  writer's  The  Death  of  Christ,  p.  28. 

2  If  there  is  anything  in  the  gospels  which  was  certainly  not  invented, 


THE  MESSIAH  AND  THE  CROSS        293 

rection,  indeed,  is  merely  mentioned  (though  the  notice 
in  ch.  9  l0  that  the  disciples  questioned  with  one  another 
what  the  rising  from  the  dead  should  be,  shows  that  it 
was  mentioned  with  a  significance  which  arrested  attention), 
but  the  sufferings  and  death  are  dwelt  upon  with  ex- 
traordinary emphasis.  It  is  as  though  Jesus  were  saying 
to  His  disciples  all  through  this  period,  I  am  indeed  the 
Messiah,  the  Person  through  whom  God's  Kingdom 
with  all  its  hopes  and  blessings  is  to  be  realised,  and  you 
are  right  to  recognise  Me  as  such.  But  the  Kingdom  is 
not  what  you  think,  and  as  little  is  the  vocation  of  the  King. 
The  Son  of  Man  must  suffer  many  things,  and  be  rejected, 
and  be  killed.  His  death  is  divinely  necessary;  it  has  to 
be  faced  in  the  path  along  which  the  Father  calls  Him. 
The  loyalty  which  you  rightly  exhibit  when  you  call 
Me  'the  Christ'  must  be  loyalty  to  one  who  dies  in  the 
Christ's  vocation.  The  coming  of  the  Kingdom  is  de- 
pendent not  only  on  the  presence  of  Jesus  upon  earth, 
but  on  His  passion;  the  hopes  which  are  fulfilled  for  us 
through  Him  are  fulfilled  through  His  death.  The  men- 
tion of  the  resurrection  on  every  occasion  on  which  the 
death  is  mentioned  suggests  that  the  action  of  Jesus  in 
the  Messianic  character  does  not  cease  with  His  death, 
but  is  continued  after  it  on  a  grander  scale;  the  attitude 
of  the  disciples  toward  Him  when  they  made  the  confession 
at  Caesarea  Philippi  is  to  be  maintained  through  the 
death  and  beyond  it.  It  will  not  be  changed,  it  will  be 
intensified  and  made  unchangeable,  when  those  who  have 
felt,  with  whatever  indefiniteness,  that  Jesus  is  the  Person 

it  is  the  storv  of  Peter  rebuking  Jesus,  and  of  Jesus  turning  on  the  chief 
of  the  apostles  with  the  terrible  reproof,  'Get  thee  behind  Me,  Satan;  thy 
mind  is  set  not  on  the  things  of  God,  but  on  the  things  of  men.'  The 
truth  of  this  incident  is  all  the  proof  we  need  that  Jesus  had  spoken  with 
impressive  earnestness  of  His  sufferings  and  death  as  involved  in  His  di- 
vine vocation.  The  attempts  to  discredit  it  made  by  Wrede  {Das 
Messiasgeheimniss  in  den  Evangelien,  p.  115  ff.)  and  Loisy  (Les  Evangiles 
Synoptiques,  ii.  20  ff .)  really  do  not  call  for  serious  criticism. 


294  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

through  whom  God's  saving  help  must  come  to  them, 
realise  that  nothing  less  than  His  sufferings  and  death 
are  required  in  order  that  it  may  come  with  effect.  There 
is  nothing  in  this  that  can  properly  be  called  doctrine, 
and  unless  we  deny  that  Jesus  ever  thought  of  His 
death,  or  maintain  that  He  could  not  possibly  have 
seen  in  it  the  cup  which  the  Father  gave  Him  to  drink, 
there  is  no  reason  why  we  should  question  the  value  of 
the  gospel  record.  Its  importance  to  our  present  pur- 
pose is  that  it  shows  us  the  death  of  Jesus  bulking  in 
His  own  thoughts  as  it  did  in  those  of  the  primitive 
Church.  Possibly  the  primitive  Church  may  have  made 
reflections  upon  it  which  were  not  His,  but  it  did  not 
give  it  another  or  a  greater  place  than  He.  The  King- 
dom is  dependent  on  the  King,  and  in  some  divinely 
necessary  way  on  a  King  who  dies  for  it:  this  is  the 
mind  of  the  primitive  Church — the  characteristic  attitude 
of  Christian  faith — but  it  is  also  the  mind  of  Jesus. 
The  Church  is  not,  in  this  characteristic  attitude, 
yielding  to  an  impulse  of  its  own  which  sets  it  at  va- 
riance with  its  Lord  ;  its  sense  of  obligation  to  the 
death  of  Jesus  corresponds  to  the  emphasis  which  Jesus 
Himself  lays  on  His  death  as  involved  in  the  Messianic 
calling. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  assume  that  the  sentences  in 
Mark  which  immediately  follow  the  rebuke  to  Peter 
stand  in  close  historical  connexion  with  it  (ch.  S^-o1). 
To  part  of  them  very  exact  parallels  are  found  in  Matthew 
and  Luke  in  two  different  connexions;  in  Matt.  16  24~29 
and  Luke  9  23~27,  which  are  the  counterpart  of  Mark  at 
this  point,  and  again  in  Matt.  10  38  f-  and  Luke  14 27,  17  33. 
These  last  we  have  already  considered  as  part  of  the  non- 
Marcan  source  common  to  Matthew  and  Luke  (see 
p.  209  f.),  and  it  is  not  necessary  to  examine  them  again. 
Jesus  requires  in  them  an  absolute  devotion  to  the  King- 


THE  MESSIAH  AND  THE  CROSS        295 

dom  of  God,  but  to  the  Kingdom  as  a  cause  which  is  indis- 
tinguishable from  Himself.  'Whoso  shall  lose  his  life 
for  My  sake  and  the  gospel's  shall  save  it.'  Mark  is  the 
only  evangelist  who  introduces  'the  gospel'  in  this  way, 
and  the  expression  may  be  due  to  him;  but  there  is  no 
reason  to  doubt  that  Jesus  gave  His  Person  the  significance 
here  ascribed  to  it  in  relation  to  the  Kingdom.1  In  pre- 
cisely the  same  way,  too,  as  in  the  non-Marcan  source, 
He  appeals  to  what  will  take  place  at  the  last  day  to  set 
this  significance  in  the  strongest  light.  'Whoso  shall  be 
ashamed  of  me  and  My  words  in  this  adulterous  and 
sinful  generation,  of  him  also  shall  the  Son  of  Man  be 
ashamed  when  He  comes  in  the  glory  of  His  Father  with- 
the  holy  angels.'  This  is  the  only  passage  in  the  gospels 
in  which  the  word  'to  be  ashamed'  {ir.aiG^meadat)  is 
used,  but  this  does  not  justify  us  in  deriving  it  from  Paul, 
who  also  uses  the  word  only  once  (Rom.  1  16)  in  the  same 
connexion.  If  Jesus  could  say  the  things  we  have  already 
seen  about  confessing  and  denying  Him  before  men,  He 
could  quite  easily  speak  of  men  being  ashamed  of  Him 
and  His  words.  A  close  connexion  with  the  context 
is  not  to  be  forced.  It  is  quite  needless  to  argue  that  what 
is  in  the  mind  of  the  evangelist  is  specifically  what  Paul 
calls  the  offence  of  the  Cross — the  offence  which  has  just 
been  illustrated  in  the  case  of  Peter — and  that  the  shame 
in  question  is  precisely  that  which  Jews  would  feel 
before  their  countrymen  in  acknowledging  a  crucified 
Messiah;  and  then  to  infer  from  this  that  Jesus  never  used 
such  words  at  all,  but  that  an  evangelist,  steeped  in  the 
Pauline  gospel,  has  put  them  into  His  lips.  Surely  there 
is  no  want  of  clearness,  as  Loisy  would  have  it,  in  the  idea 
that  Jesus  will  be  ashamed  of  those  who  are  ashamed  of 
Him,  and  that  He  will  be  ashamed  of  them  in  circum- 

1  Loisy  can  say  no  more  against  it  than  '  II  est  possible  que  les  mots  "k 
cause  de  moi"  n'appartiennent  pas  k  la  sentence  primitive.' 


296  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

stances  in  which  everything  for  them  depends  on  His 
recognition.  The  words  never  fail  to  impress  those  who 
hear  them,  and  this  is  all  they  were  intended  to  do.  The 
evangelist  may  have  found  them  in  some  other  connexion, 
or  perhaps  in  no  connexion  at  all;  but  he  must  have  con- 
ceived them  to  be  relevant  when  he  introduced  them  here, 
and  there  is  not  the  slightest  reason  to  suggest  that  they 
do  not  represent  the  mind  of  Jesus.  And  once  more  we 
must  say  it  is  a  mind  in  which  Jesus  has  the  place  and 
significance  which  He  has  always  had  in  the  faith  of  the 
Christian  Church. 

Before  proceeding  to  examine  the  striking  reference 
to  the  death  of  Jesus  with  which  this  section  in  Mark 
closes,  we  may  refer  to  the  singular  passage  in  ch.  9  33~50. 
With  the  exception  of  ch.  iv.  (the  parables)  and  ch.  xiii. 
(the  eschatological  discourse)  this  is  the  only  place  in 
which  Mark  gives  any  considerable  number  of  Jesus' 
sayings.  They  do  not  seem  to  be  chronologically  and 
historically  connected,  but  rather  to  be  linked  to  each 
other  by  some  association  of  ideas,  or  even  by  the  recurrence 
of  the  same  terms.  They  may  all  be  said  to  turn,  in  a 
manner,  on  the  moral  temper  proper  to  disciples,  and 
several  of  them  are  distinguished  by  a  peculiar  use  of  the 
term  'name'  in  connexion  with  Jesus.  'Whoso  shall 
receive  one  of  such  children  in  My  name' — in)  r<p  ovu^ari 
ftov — 'receiveth  Me'  (ver.  37).  'We  saw  one  casting  out 
demons  in  thy  name' — iv  rw  dvdfiari  aou — 'and  we  for- 
bade him'  (ver.  38).  'There  is  no  one  who  shall  do  a 
mighty  work  in  My  name' — in)  r<p  dvdftarc  fiou — 'and 
shall  be  able  quickly  to  speak  evil  of  Me'  (ver.  39). 
'Whoseover  shall  give  you  a  cup  of  water  to  drink  in 
name  that  ye  are  Christ's — Iv  dvdfiart  on  -^piazob  laxz — 
'  verily  I  say  unto  you,  he  shall  not  lose  his  reward. '  The 
recurrence  of  'the  name'  of  Jesus  here  is  very  remarkable, 
and  there  are  analogous  examples  elsewhere  in  the  gospels. 


THE   MESSIAH  AND  THE  CROSS         297 

Cf.  Matt.  10 22  ('hated  by  all  for  My  name's  sake'—  did  rd 
ovofid  fiou);  also  Matt.  24  °,  Mark  13  13,  Luke  21 17,  where 
did  rd  ovofid  1100  occurs  not  in  the  'little  Apocalypse,' 
but  in  the  part  of  the  apocalyptic  discourse  which  is  gen- 
erally admitted  to  come  from  Jesus;  Luke  21 12,  Ivexev 
rob  dvdfiaros  fjtoo,  where  the  parallel  in  Mark  13  9  has 
ivexev  £[iod ,  for  My  sake;  and  finally  Matt.  19 29,  where 
I'vcxa  rod  ovofiard?  fiou  =  for  My  name's  sake,  corre- 
sponds   to    Mark    IO  29,     ivexev    ifioo    xai    rob    ioayyeXiou  = 

for  My  sake  and  the  gospel's,  and  to  Luke  18  29,  etvexev 
Tjj?  fiavdeias  rob  6eob  =  iov  the  sake  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God.  A  comparison  of  all  these  instances  will  show  that 
the  evangelists  felt  at  liberty  to  convey  what  they  knew 
to  be  the  meaning  of  Jesus  with  a  certain  degree  of  freedom; 
but  it  will  hardly  be  doubted,  however  we  try  to  interpret 
the  separate  applications  of  it,  that  a  unique  significance 
is  asserted  for  Him,  in  relation  to  the  Kingdom  of  God, 
through  all  the  varieties  of  expression.1  It  is  their  relation 
to  Him  that  exposes  the  disciples  to  universal  hatred 
(Mark  13  13) ;  it  is  through  reliance  on  Him  that  the  saving 
power  of  God  is  bestowed  on  men,  and  they  can  do  mighty 
works  (9  39) ;  it  is  because  the  little  ones  are  connected 
with  Him  that  the  smallest  service  done  them  is  sure  of 
its  reward  (9  41),  and  that  any  wrong  inflicted  on  them  is 
threatened  with  the  most  terrible  judgment  (Matt.  18  6). 
When  we  reflect  how  impossible  it  is  to  substitute  any 
other  name  here  for  the  name  of  Jesus,  or  to  suppose  that 
any  other  person  could  assume  that  he  had  that  unique 
significance  in  relation  to  the  Kingdom  of  God  which 
Jesus  here  assumes  for  Himself,  we  must  admit  that  the 
place  which  apostolic  faith  assigned  Him  in  the  true  re- 
ligion is  no  other  than  that  which    His  self-revelation 

1  Klostermann  on  Mark  10  29  suggests  that  possibly  zvekev  kfiov  kcu  tov 
evayyeXiov,  evetcev  tov  ovo/iardc;  fiov,  evenev  rrjq  ftaoileiaq  tov  Oeov  are  all 
expansions  of  an  original  eveaev  kfiov.  If  this  were  so  it  would  rather 
strengthen  than  weaken  the  argument. 


298  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

demands.  It  does  not  transcend  that  self -revelation, 
it  corresponds  to  it,  when  we  hear  Peter  declare  after  the 
resurrection  that  there  is  none  other  name  under  heaven 
given  among  men  whereby  we  must  be  saved  (Acts  4  ,2). 
The  last  of  the  sections  in  Mark  which  deal  with  the 
Messiah  and  the  Cross  is  peculiarly  important  (10 32"45). 
It  opens  with  a  historical  reminiscence  which  it  requires 
some  courage  to  question.  'They  were  in  the  way  going 
up  to  Jerusalem,  and  Jesus  was  going  before  them:  and 
they  were  amazed;  and  they  that  followed  were  afraid.' 
We  cannot  fix  the  locality,  but  the  time  meant  is  certainly 
not  far  from  the  end;  they  may  even  have  crossed  the  Jor- 
dan and  been  moving  toward  Jericho.  The  kind  of  lead 
which  Jesus  took  (jjy  Ttpodywv)  was  apparently  what  amazed 
them;  He  had  never  before  stepped  out  in  front  of  them 
in  this  fashion,  as  though  He  were  impatient  to  reach  His 
journey's  end.  It  is  probably  a  true  remembrance  of 
the  temper  of  Jesus  all  through  this  journey  when  Luke 
tells  us  that  'He  set  His  face  stedfastly  to  go  to  Jeru- 
salem' (951)j  and  that  somewhere  in  the  course  of  it, 
with  His  eye  upon  the  end,  He  exclaimed,  'I  have  a 
baptism  to  be  baptized  with,  and  how  am  I  straitened 
until  it  is  accomplished'  (12  50);  it  is  in  this  temper  that 
we  see  Him  here.  He  is  absorbed  in  something  which 
the  disciples  have  not  taken  in:  He  is  rapt  in  it  as  He 
was  in  the  earlier  work  of  His  ministry  when  His  friends 
said  He  is  beside  Himself.  'They  that  followed'  do  not 
seem  to  be  the  Twelve,  but  others  who  had  gathered 
about  Him  on  the  way;  their  fear  may  only  be  the  sense 
of  something  unnatural  in  such  an  overstrained  mental 
condition,  as  they  would  think  it,  or  it  may  have  been  due 
to  the  feeling  that  Jerusalem  was  an  unsafe  place  for  a 
person  with  the  ideas  and  purposes  of  Jesus.  But,  how- 
ever we  are  to  read  the  situation,  it  is  a  situation  so  unique 
and  so  vivid  that  it  is  impossible  to  regard  it  as  unreal. 


THE  MESSIAH  AND  THE   CROSS         299 

The  key  to  it  is  contained  in  Bengel's  comment  on  the 
corresponding  paragraph  in  Matthew:  Jesus  jam  turn 
habitabat  in  passione  sua.  It  is  with  this  preoccupation 
that  He  once  more  takes  the  Twelve  apart,  and  begins  to 
tell  them  the  things  that  are  to  befall  Him.  The  subject  is 
still  the  Son  of  Man,  and  in  detail  the  prediction  surpasses 
those  that  have  gone  before,1  but  that  need  not  make  us 
question  the  fact  that  in  the  memorable  circumstances 
described  Jesus  tried  once  more  to  initiate  His  disciples 
into  His  own  conception  of  what  was  involved  in  the  Messi- 
anic calling.  He  was  under  no  illusion  about  what  His 
going  to  Jerusalem  meant,  but  He  set  His  face  stedfastly 
to  go,  nevertheless.  He  was  conscious  that  there  was 
a  divine  necessity  in  it  to  which  He  was  called  to  submit, 
and  He  sought  to  enlighten  the  disciples  concerning  it. 
The  lesson  was  no  more  successful  than  those  which 
preceded.  Luke  puts  in  the  strongest  language  its  com- 
plete failure.  '  And  they  understood  none  of  these  things, 
and  this  saying  was  hidden  from  them,  and  they  perceived 
not  the  things  which  were  said'  (18  34).  Mark  (followed 
by  Matthew)  does  not  as  at  9 32  comment  upon  their  want 
of  intelligence,  but  he  records  an  incident  which  sets  it 
in  the  strongest  light. 

James  and  John,  the  sons  of  Zebedee,  come  to  Him 
with  a  request  that  they  may  sit,  one  on  His  right  hand 
and  the  other  on  His  left  in  His  glory.  This  request  is 
one  of  the  irrefragable  proofs  that  Jesus  was  regarded, 
even  in  His  lifetime,  as  the  Christ — that  is,  as  the  Person 
through  whom  the  Kingdom  of  God  was  to  come.  Luke, 
no  doubt,  omits  the  whole  incident,  though  he  gives  in 

1  It  can  hardly  be  doubted  here  that  the  event  has  given  precision  to 
the  prophecy.  In  Mark  it  is  virtually  a  programme  of  the  Passion  nar- 
rative in  all  its  details.  How  unconsciously  a  catechist  or  preacher  would 
give  this  kind  of  definiteness  to  what  Jesus  said  of  'the  things  that  were 
to  befall  Him'  is  apparent  here  from  Matt.  20  19,  who,  though  in  other 
respects  dependent  on  Mark,  introduces  'crucify'  into  his  version  of 
Jesus'  words  instead  of  'kill.' 


3oo  JESUS  AND   THE   GOSPEL 

another  connexion  (22  24~27)  some  of  the  words  spoken  by 
Jesus  on  this  occasion,  but  that  gives  us  no  reason  for 
doubting  its  historical  character.  'Luke  always  spares 
the  Twelve. '  The  disciples  had  already  begun  to  believe 
in  Jesus  as  the  Christ,  and  when  He  resolved  to  go  up  to 
Jerusalem  they  felt  that  a  crisis  in  His  fortunes  (and  in 
their  own)  was  approaching.  As  Jerusalem  drew  near, 
many  who  followed  Jesus  thought  that  the  Kingdom  of 
God  was  on  the  point  of  appearing  (Luke  19  n).  James 
and  John  evidently  shared  these  expectations,  and  it  was 
the  intense  preoccupation  of  their  minds  by  them  which 
made  them  insensible  to  Jesus'  words.  It  is  quite  gra- 
tuitous to  say  that  the  request  they  make  to  Jesus  would 
be  more  appropriate  if  it  were  connected  with  a  saying 
like  that  in  Matt.  19 28  and  Luke  22  29,  in  which  Jesus 
promises  the  disciples  that  they  will  one  day  sit  on  thrones 
judging  the  twelve  tribes  of  Israel,1  and  that  the  evangelist 
here  has  lost  the  true  perspective.  What  this  means  is 
that  only  the  words  preserved  in  Luke  22  24"27  can  claim 
to  be  regarded  as  words  of  Jesus:  the  whole  conversation 
of  Jesus  with  the  sons  of  Zebedee  is  fiction.  Most  people 
will  find  it  difficult  to  treat  such  criticism  seriously;  one 
can  imagine  motives  for  it,  but  no  reason,  at  least  none 
that  falls  within  the  domain  of  history.  The  request  of 
the  two  brothers  is  seriously  made,  and  it  is  seriously 
taken  by  Jesus,  but  it  only  reveals  the  immense  gulf 
between  His  mind  and  theirs.  He  accepts,  indeed,  and 
this  is  the  point  we  must  emphasise,  their  implied  homage 
to  Him  as  the  King.  He  is  going  to  come  in  glory  and  to 
sit  on  His  throne,  and  it  will  be  the  supreme  honour  to 
sit  at  His  right  hand  and  His  left.  It  is  not  only  in  their 
consciousness  but  in  His  own  that  the  supreme  place  in 

1  So  Loisy  ad  loc,  who  finds  in  this  connexion  an  explanation  of  the 
word  'sit,'  which  he  thinks  otherwise  inappropriate,  in  the  request  of 
James  and  John. 


THE  MESSIAH  AND  THE  CROSS        301 

the  Kingdom  of  God  belongs  to  Him.  But  He  knows 
as  they  do  not  the  way  which  leads  to  that  glory.  He  has 
a  cup  to  drink,  a  baptism  to  be  baptized  with,  before  He 
ascends  the  throne.  It  is  through  drinking  that  cup — 
the  cup  of  bewilderment  which  the  Father  is  putting  into 
His  hand;  through  being  baptized  with  that  baptism — 
letting  all  the  waves  and  the  billows  of  the  agony  which 
clouds  the  future  pass  over  Him:  it  is  through  awful  ex- 
periences like  these  that  His  triumph  is  to  be  achieved 
and  His  Kingdom  won.  He  knows  this — how  can  we 
deny  that  He  knew  it  unless  by  accusing  Him  of  an  inability 
to  discern  the  signs  of  the  times  like  that  of  which  He 
impeached  His  contemporaries? — and  He  knows  also 
that  the  only  way  to  greatness  in  the  Kingdom  of  God 
is  that  which  He  Himself  must  tread.  Hence,  far  as  the 
thoughts  of  the  disciples  are  from  His  own  thoughts, 
He  recognises  their  seriousness  and  their  loyalty  when 
He  says:  'You  know  not  what  you  ask.  Are  you  able  to 
drink  the  cup  which  I  drink,  and  to  be  baptized  with 
the  baptism  with  which  I  am  baptized  ? '  There  is  nothing, 
they  feel  in  their  hearts,  that  they  would  not  do  with  Him 
and  for  Him,  and  they  answer,  'We  are  able.'  Appre- 
ciating their  sincerity  and  devotion,  Jesus  takes  them  at 
their  word.  'The  cup  which  I  drink  ye  shall  drink,  and 
with  the  baptism  with  which  I  am  baptized  shall  ye  be 
baptized.'  It  is  becoming  common  now  for  critics  to 
assume  that  this  implies  the  martyrdom,  in  the  strict  sense, 
of  James  and  John,1  and  the  natural  inference  of  course 
is  that  Jesus  never  spoke  such  words.  He  could  not  fore- 
tell the  violent  death  of  the  brothers.     But  it  is  the  inter- 

1  So  Loisy,  ii.  238:  'Pour  celui  qui  a  redige  cette  prediction,  la  mort 
sanglante  des  Zebedeides  etait  un  fait  acquis,  appartenant  au  passe,  comme 
la  passion  raeme  de  Jesus.'  Part  of  the  attraction  of  this  interpretation 
is  no  doubt  the  fact  that  it  supports  the  statement  of  the  Papias  fragment 
published  by  De  Boors  (Texte  u.  Untersuchungen,  v.  ii.  166  ff.)  that 
James  and  John  were  killed  by  the  Jews  (presumably  in  Jerusalem),  and 
that  John  therefore  cannot  have  been  the  author  of  the  fourth  gospel. 


3o2  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

pretation  which  is  wrong.  The  mood  in  which  Jesus 
speaks  of  the  things  which  are  to  befall  Him  as  a  baptism 
and  a  cup  is  not  one  which  lends  itself  to  such  painfully 
prosaic  treatment.  It  is  nothing  short  of  absurd  to  say 
that  unless  James  and  John  were  put  to  death— strictly 
speaking,  it  should  be  crucified— the  words  'Ye  shall 
indeed  drink  of  My  cup  and  be  baptized  with  My  baptism' 
are  meaningless  or  untrue.  They  are  full  of  truth  and 
meaning  in  the  lips  of  Jesus,  not  because  James  and  John 
were  subsequently  put  to  death  for  the  gospel — no  one  can 
prove  this  by  historical  evidence— but  because  He  saw 
that  these  brave  and  simple  souls,  unintelligent  though 
they  were,  had  it  in  them  to  follow  Him  to  the  end.  When 
He  declines  to  assign  them  places  on  His  right  hand  and 
His  left,  it  is  not  that  He  disclaims  His  own  place  as  King: 
but  the  honours  claimed  are  not  to  be  assigned  by  favour, 
but  to  those  for  whom  they  have  been  prepared.  On 
what  principle  they  are  prepared  we  get  a  hint  from  what 
follows. 

James  and  John  had  apparently  approached  Jesus  in 
private,  but  what  they  had  done  became  known.  The 
other  disciples,  who  suffered  from  the  same  misconcep- 
tions of  the  Kingdom  and  the  same  selfish  ambition, 
were  provoked.  Jesus  called  them  to  Him  and  gave 
them  all  a  lesson  on  the  true  nature  of  greatness,  which 
was  at  the  same  time  a  lesson  on  the  Kingdom  and  its 
King.  'Those  who  are  accounted  to  rule  the  Gentiles 
lord  it  over  them,  and  their  great  ones  deal  arbitrarily 
with  them.  But  it  shall  not  be  so  among  you.  But 
whoso  will  become  great  among  you  shall  be  your  ser- 
vant, and  whoso  will  become  first  among  you  shall  be 
slave  of  all.  For  even  the  Son  of  Man  did  not  come  to 
be  served,  but  to  serve,  and  to  give  His  life  a  ransom  for 
many.'  What  mainly  concerns  us  here  is  the  self-revela- 
tion of  Jesus  in  the  last  sentence.     The  law  of  the  King- 


THE  MESSIAH  AND  THE   CROSS         303 

dom  is  illustrated  supremely  in  the  person  of  the  King: 
it  is  in  Him  we  see  what  greatness  is  and  how  it  is  attained. 
It  is  attained  by  service;  at  its  greatest  height  it  is  attained 
by  a  service  which  for  lowliness  and  sacrifice  can  never 
be  outdone.     The  Speaker  is  the  King,  the  Son  of  Man, 
who  is  to  sit  on  the  throne  of  His  glory:   and  He  is  con- 
sciously reflecting,  as  in  other  places  where  He  speaks  of 
having  come  (Mark  2  17;    Luke  9  s6,   12  49,  19 10;    Matt. 
5  17,  io34f),  on  His  vocation  and  the  way  in  which  it  is 
to  be  fulfilled.     There  could  not  be  a  more  solemn  utter- 
ance, and  most  people  will  feel  a  natural  reluctance  to 
suppose  that  it  has  been  modified  in  tradition.     Yet  this 
is  one  of  the  points  at  which  a  considerable  body  of  criti- 
cism assails  the  evangelist's  testimony.     The  last  words  of 
the  sentence — 'and  to  give  His  life  a  ransom  for  many' — 
are  denied  to  Jesus.     Partly  this  is  done  for  what  may 
be  considered  a  properly  critical  reason.     The  parallel 
in  Luke,  it  is  said,  does  not  contain  them.     But  it  is  a 
fair  question  how  far  there  is  a  parallel  in  Luke  at  all. 
Luke,  as  has  been  noticed,  omits  the  whole  incident  of 
the  sons  of  Zebedee,  and  the  words  of  Jesus  he  reports 
in  22  27 — 'For  who  is  greater,  he  that  sitteth  at  meat  or 
he  that  serveth?  is  it  not  he  that  sitteth  at  meat?  but  I 
am  among  you  as  he  that  serveth' — while  they  are  akin 
to  what  we  find  here,  are  definitely  appropriate  to  the 
supper-table  at  which  they  are  spoken,   and  cannot  be 
assumed  to  be  an  earlier  and  truer  form  of  Mark  10 45. 
Dismissing  this  textual  reason,   then,   as  inadequate  to 
throw  suspicion  on  the  words,  we  turn  the  other  way 
in  which  they  are  questioned.     They  represent,  it  is  said, 
the  Pauline  doctrine  of  redemption,  and  are  not  on  the 
same  plane  with  the  rest  of  the  passage.     When  Jesus 
speaks  of  service,  He  speaks  of  something  in  which  the 
disciples  are  to  follow  Him:  'I  came  not  to  be  ministered 
unto  but  to  minister,  and  you  must  live  in  the  same  spirit ; 


3o4  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

you  must  serve  as  I  serve  if  you  wish  to  share  My  greatness 
in  the  Kingdom.'  This,  it  is  said,  is  intelligible  and 
ethical,  in  harmony  with  all  the  teaching  of  Jesus;  but 
with  the  giving  of  His  life  a  ransom  for  many  we  have 
a  fierdfiafft?  efc  «AAo  y(\,o$  1 — the  thought  is  transferred 
to  another  plane.  This  is  not  a  service  in  which  the 
disciples  can  follow  Jesus;  it  is  irrelevant  and  inappro- 
priate here;  and  the  inference  is  that  it  is  not  due  to  Jesus, 
but  is  an  incongruous  supplement  to  His  words  by  the 
evangelist. 

In  spite  of  the  imposing  names  by  which  it  is  supported, 
this  is  not  an  argument  which  impresses  the  writer.  The 
idea  contained  in  the  words  '  to  give  His  life  a  ransom  for 
many'  is  not  one  which  can  have  been  strange  to  Jesus. 
The  problem  of  finding  a  ransom  or  equivalent  for  for- 
feited lives  is  one  to  which  He  has  already  alluded  in 
ch.  8 37 :  '  What  shall  a  man  give  in  exchange  for  his  soul 
(or  life)?'  It  appears  in  Old  Testament  passages  with 
which  He  cannot  but  have  been  familiar.  '  None  of  them 
can  by  any  means  redeem  his  brother,  nor  give  to  God  a 
ransom  for  him:  (for  the  redemption  of  their  soul  is  costly, 
and  must  be  let  alone  for  ever:)  that  he  should  still  live 
alway,  that  he  should  not  see  corruption'  (Ps.  49  7  ff). 
This  supreme  need  of  man — this  service  that  none  can 
render  either  to  himself  or  his  brother — is  suggested  also 
in  Job  33  22fL:  'His  soul  draweth  near  to  the  pit,  and  his 
life  to  the  destroyers.  .  .  .  Then  He  is  gracious  unto  him, 
and  saith,  Deliver  him  from  going  down  to  the  pit,  I  have 
found  a  ransom.'  It  pervades  the  fifty-third  chapter  of 
Isaiah,  where  there  is  the  same  contrast  as  here  between 

1  This  is  how  it  is  put  by  Wellhausen,  Evangelium  Marci,  ad  loc. 
Loisy,  ii.  241,  says:  'L'idee  de  la  vie  donnee  en  rancon  appartient  a  un 
autre  courant  que  celle  du  service.'  The  other  courant  is  that  of  Pauline 
theology.  He  refers  to  Rom.  15  3,  Phil.  2  78,  Gal.  1  4,  2  20,  and  then 
writes:  'Mark  10 45  parait  concu  d'apres  ces  passages.  L'idee  du 
"rachat  de  vie"  etait  familiere  a  Pevangeliste,  8  37.'  Why  not  'familiere 
a  Jesus'  ?     It  is  His  words  which  are  quoted  in  8  37. 


THE  MESSIAH  AND  THE  CROSS        305 

one  and  many — the  one  Righteous  Servant  and  the  many 
whom  He  justifies  and  whose  sins  He  bears  at  the  cost  of 
giving  His  life  for  them  (Is.  53  10'12).  The  ideas  of  the 
passage,  therefore,  present  no  antecedent  difficulty:  they 
are  ideas  which  lie  at  the  heart  of  the  ancient  religion. 
Further,  there  is  nothing  incongruous,  nothing  which 
makes  us  feel  that  we  have  risen  (or  sunk)  to  another  plane 
of  thought,  when  these  ideas  are  treated  as  if  they  were 
continuous  with  that  of  service.  They  really  are  con- 
tinuous; they  are  naturally  regarded  by  the  Speaker  as 
indicative  of  the  supreme  service  which  the  many  need  and 
which  He  must  render.  He  served  them  in  numberless 
ways,  but  it  was  not  inconsistent  with  any  of  these  -ways, 
it  was  only  carrying  service  to  its  utmost  limit,  when  He 
gave  His  life  a  ransom  for  them.  It  is  quite  true  that  the 
disciples  cannot  do  the  same  service.  Our  lives  have  no 
such  virtue  in  them  as  His  sinless  life,  and  cannot  be  prized 
at  such  a  price.  Nevertheless,  we  must  follow  Jesus  in 
doing  service  even  to  this  limit:  'We  also  ought  to  lay 
down  our  lives  for  the  brethren '  (1  John  3  16) .  If,  now, 
there  is  no  objection  on  these  grounds  to  Jesus  having 
uttered  the  words  here  put  into  His  lips,  the  only  ground 
on  which  they  can  be  rejected  is  that  they  imply  a  con- 
sciousness, on  the  part  of  Jesus,  of  His  own  relation  to 
the  ideas  they  convey,  which  is  inherently  incredible. 
The  ideas,  it  must  be  admitted,  were  in  circulation,  and 
the  subsumption  of  them  under  the  general  conception 
of  service  is  entirely  appropriate;  all  that  can  be  disputed 
is  that  Jesus  made  the  application  of  them  to  Himself. 

This,  it  may  confidently  be  said,  can  only  be  main- 
tained against  the  total  impression  which  the  representa- 
tion of  Jesus  in  the  gospels  makes  upon  us.  Jesus  is 
not  a  prophet,  He  is  to  His  own  consciousness  the  Messiah, 
the  Person  through  whom  prophecy  is  to  be  fulfilled  and  the 
Kingdom  of  God  established.     To  establish  God's  King- 


3o6  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

dom  is  to  do  the  supreme  service  to  humanity,  and  just  as 
we  have  seen  Him  already  declare  His  sole  adequacy  to 
the  task  when  it  is  conceived  as  the  revelation  of  the  Fa- 
ther (p.  239),  so  here  we  find  Him  declare  His  adequacy 
to  it  again  when  it  is  conceived  as  the  ransoming  of  for- 
feited lives  by  the  surrender  of  a  life  worth  more  than  all. 
'To  understand  Him' — as  Dr.  George  Adam  Smith  has 
said  in  a  memorable  page  already  quoted1 — 'it  is  sufficient 
to  remember  that  the  redemptive  value  of  the  sufferings  of 
the  righteous,  an  atonement  made  for  sin  not  through 
material  sacrifice  but  in  the  obedience  and  spiritual  agony 
of  an  ethical  agent,  was  an  idea  familiar  to  prophecy. 
It  is  enough  to  be  sure,  as  we  can  be  sure,  that  He  whose 
grasp  of  the  truths  of  the  Old  Testament  excelled  that  of 
every  one  of  His  predecessors,  did  not  apply  this  particular 
truth  to  Himself  in  a  vaguer  way,  nor  understand  by  it 
less,  than  they  did.  His  people's  pardon,  His  people's 
purity — foretold  as  the  work  of  a  righteous  life,  a  perfect 
service  of  God,  a  willing  self-sacrifice — He  now  accepted  as 
His  own  work,  and  for  it  He  offered  His  life  and  sub- 
mitted unto  death.  The  ideas,  as  we  have  seen,  were  not 
new;  the  new  thing  was  that  He  felt  they  were  to  be  ful- 
filled in  His  Person  and  through  His  Passion.  But  all  this 
implies  two  equally  extraordinary  and  amazing  facts: 
that  He  who  had  a  more  profound  sense  than  any  other  of 
the  spiritual  issues  in  the  history  of  Israel,  was  conscious 
that  all  these  issues  were  culminating  to  their  crisis  in 
Himself;  and  that  He  who  had  the  keenest  moral  judg- 
ment ever  known  on  earth  was  sure  of  His  own  virtue 
for  such  a  crisis — was  sure  of  that  perfection  of  His  previ- 
ous service  without  which  His  self-sacrifice  would  be  in 
vain.  ...  It  is  a  very  singular  confidence.  Men  there 
have  been  who  felt  themselves  able  to  say  "I  know,"  and 
who  died  like  Him  for  their  convictions.     But  He  was 

1  Jerusalem,  ii.  547  f.     See  above,  p.  266. 


THE  TRIUMPHAL  ENTRY  307 

able  to  say  "I  am.  I  am  that  to  which  prophecy  has 
pointed,"  and  was  able  to  feel  Himself  worthy  to  be  that.' 
Nothing  could  be  truer  to  the  gospel  presentation  of  Jesus. 
The  difference  between  'I  know'  and  'I  am'  is  the  differ- 
ence between  the  prophet  and  the  Saviour,  between  ,the 
Old  Testament  and  the  New;  and  the  passage  with  which 
we  are  dealing,  though  a  supremely  important  instance, 
is  only  one  instance  after  all  of  the  habitual  and  charac- 
teristic consciousness  of  Jesus.  If  it  stood  alone,  the  criti- 
cism which  we  have  been  discussing  might  seem  more 
plausible;  but  careful  scrutiny  of  the  words  in  the  light 
of  Jesus'  self-revelation  as  a  whole  lifts  them  above  the 
shadow  of  a  doubt.  In  regarding  Jesus  as  Redeemer 
at  the  cost  of  His  life,  as  well  as  Revealer  of  God,  the 
consciousness  of  the  New  Testament  Christian  corresponds 
to  the  consciousness  of  the  Christ  Himself. 

The  Triumphal  Entry  into  Jerusalem 

(Mark  11  1"10) 

The  incident  we  have  just  examined  is  closely  fol- 
lowed in  Mark  by  another  in  which  also  we  see  how  Jesus 
thought  of  Himself.  The  circumstances  of  His  entrance 
into  Jerusalem  were  not  accidental,  so  far  as  He  was  con- 
cerned. The  fourth  gospel,  indeed,  tells  us  that  His 
disciples  did  not  realise  at  the  time  what  they  were  doing 
(12  16):  only  after  the  resurrection  did  it  occur  to  them 
that  they  had  unconsciously  been  fulfilling  prophecy. 
But  Jesus,  it  may  be  said,  organised  the  procession;  He 
sent  for  the  ass's  colt  on  which  He  was  to  enter  the  capital 
in  lowly  state.  On  His  part  it  is  a  Messianic  act,  and 
reveals  the  consciousness  of  the  King.  It  is  difficult  to 
deny  that  the  multitudes  who  shouted  'Hosanna'  were 
without  some  perception  of  this,  though  their  ideas  of  the 
kingship  may  have  differed  widely  from  His.  They  hailed 
Him  as  'Son  of  David,'  or  thought  of  the  Kingdom  He 


3o8  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

was  to  restore  as  that  of  'our  father  David'  (Mark  n  10), 
but  the  humble  pomp  suggested  rather  a  Prince  of  Peace 
than  the  warrior  king  who  had  stretched  the  bounds 
of  Israel  from  Egypt  to  the  Euphrates.  In  any  case, 
however,  the  triumphal  entry  is  the  act  of  One  who  iden- 
tifies His  own  coming  with  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God.  'Son  of  David'  may  be  a  misleading  description 
of  the  Messiah,  but  it  is  with  the  consciousness  of  being 
the  Messiah  that  Jesus  here  passes  before  us. 

The  Wicked  Husbandmen 

(Mark  12  W2) 

Of  the  various  utterances  of  Jesus  in  Jerusalem,  the 
one  which  is  first  reported  by  Mark  is  not  the  least  im- 
portant to  our  argument.  It  is  usually  called  the  parable 
of  the  wicked  husbandmen,  but  it  is  not  really  a  parable, 
like  those  which  we  find  in  the  thirteenth  chapter  of 
Matthew,  but  an  allegory.  A  parable  is  independent  of 
its  interpretation  and  application;  the  parable  of  the 
sower,  for  example,  describes  what  happens  in  Nature 
every  year,  whether  we  can  discern  its  spiritual  teaching 
or  not.  But  it  is  otherwise  with  allegory.  Allegory 
only  comes  into  existence  through  the  application  which 
is  to  be  made  of  it:  to  take  the  case  before  us,  no  pro- 
prietor and  no  husbandmen  ever  really  acted  as  the 
proprietor  and  the  husbandmen  are  here  represented  as 
doing.  The  story  has  no  truth  of  its  own:  it  is  only 
the  relations  of  God  and  Israel  which  are  represented  in 
this  artificial  form.  This  cannot  be  disputed,  but  the 
confidence  with  which  it  is  inferred  that  the  words  are 
not  those  of  Jesus  is  more  than  the  writer  can  understand. 
Jiilicher,  for  example,1  while  admitting  that  Jesus  on  ex- 

1  Die  Gleichnisreden  Jesu,  ii.  385.  Cf.  Loisy,  ii.  319:  'Comme  beau- 
coup  d' allegories,  celle-ci  n'a  qu'une  valeur  de  conception  theorique  et 
theologique.'     The  theology,  of  course,  is  that  of  the  Church,  not  of  Jesus. 


THE   SERVANTS  AND  THE  SON         309 

ceptional  occasions  may  have  used  allegory,  not  parable, 
cannot  avoid  the  suspicion  that  this  'parable'  is  due  to 
a  believer  of  the  first  generation,  who,  in  dependence  on 
Isaiah,  chapter  5,  and  on  parables  of  Jesus  to  which  he 
already  gave  an  allegorical  interpretation,  is  seeking  to 
justify  the  death  of  Jesus  to  the  religious  sense.  It  is  the 
last  and  highest  proof  of  God's  patience,  and  must  be 
immediately  followed  by  judgment.  The  whole,  he  thinks, 
shows  us  how  the  history  of  Israel  was  regarded  by  the 
average  man  who  had  seen  the  crucifixion  of  Jesus  and 
yet  believed  in  Him  as  Son  of  God.  It  is  a  piece  of  early 
Christian  apologetic  in  which  we  see  how  the  Christian 
consciousness  answered,  partly  to  itself,  partly  to  Jewish 
attacks  upon  it,  the  difficulties  presented  by  the  death  of 
its  Messiah.  In  a  similar  line  the  passage  is  criticised  by 
Loisy  and  many  others. 

There  are,  however,  serious  objections  to  this  whole 
mode  of  treatment.  To  begin  with,  there  is  no  reason 
why  Jesus  should  not  have  used  allegory  as  well  as  para- 
ble. We  may  be  quite  right  in  thinking  that  it  is  an 
inferior  literary  genre,  but  it  is  not  used  here  for  literary 
but  for  practical  purposes,  and  what  was  done  by  Isaiah, 
Ezekiel,  and  the  Psalmists,  may  quite  well  have  been 
done  by  Jesus  too.  Further,  if  this  allegory  had  been 
the  work  of  an  early  Christian  apologist,  there  are  two 
points  in  which  it  would  almost  certainly  have  been 
different.  The  drastic  statement  in  verse  9 — 'He  will 
come  and  destroy  the  husbandmen  and  give  the  vine- 
yard to  others' — would  have  been  qualified.  This  answers 
to  Jesus'  conception  of  the  destiny  of  Israel  or  her  rulers, 
and  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  (cf.  Mark  13  2),  but  not  to 
that  which  we  can  see  from  Acts  prevailed  among  the 
early  Christians.  They  had  no  such  sense  as  He  of  what 
Israel  had  forfeited  by  rejecting  Jesus,  and  of  what  a 
complete  breach  had  thus  been  made  between  the  past 


3io  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

and  the  future  in  the  history  of  the  true  religion.  This 
is  one  point:  the  other  is  that  a  Christian  who  invented 
such  an  allegory  to  justify  the  death  of  the  Son  would 
hardly  have  left  Him  dead.  He  would  have  contrived  to 
introduce  somehow  the  resurrection  of  Jesus,  and  His 
entrance  into  His  inheritance  in  spite  of  the  murderers. 
It  may  be  said  that  he  does  this,  in  such  vague  fashion 
as  his  literary  method  admits,  in  the  quotation  from  the 
118th  Psalm— 'The  stone  which  the  builders  despised, 
the  same  has  become  head  of  the  corner;  this  is  the  Lord's 
doing,  and  it  is  wonderful  in  our  eyes';  but  even  if  this  be 
admitted,  we  have  still  to  ask  why  Jesus  should  not  have 
spoken  thus  Himself.  In  point  of  fact,  the  whole  plausi- 
bility of  criticism  like  this  depends  on  the  insulation  of 
the  passage,  and  on  the  legitimacy  of  treating  it  as  if  it 
stood  alone.  But  it  cannot  legitimately  be  treated  thus. 
The  Jesus  who  is  represented  as  speaking  in  it  is  the 
Person  whose  unique  consciousness  of  Himself  and  of 
His  relation  to  God  and  His  Kingdom  has  already  been 
revealed  in  ways  that  cannot  be  disputed.  As  the  des- 
tined Messianic  King,  He  is  the  Person  in  whom  Israel's 
history  culminates,  and  it  was  as  certain  to  Him  as  pro- 
phecy and  experience  and  divine  insight  could  make  it, 
that  for  Him  the  history  must  culminate  in  a  great  tragedy. 
He  was  the  Son,  coming  after  all  the  servants,  but  destined 
to  drink  a  more  awful  cup,  to  undergo  a  more  tremendous 
baptism  than  they.  Not  that  this  was  the  last  reality  in 
His  consciousness:  the  resurrection  which  annulled  death 
always  lay  beyond,  and  He  lifts  His  head  in  triumph  as 
He  points  to  it  in  the  words  of  the  Psalm.  Nor  can  we 
say  that  an  allegory  like  this  is  a  proper  enough  thing  to 
write,  a  good  subject  for  private  meditation,  but  that  it 
is  not  suitable  in  a  concio  ad  populum:  no  one  could  see 
its  bearings.  The  evangelist  expressly  tells  us  that  it 
hit  the  mark  when  it  was  spoken  (ver.  12). 


DAVID'S   SON   AND   DAVID'S  LORD      311 

But  how  extraordinary,  when  we  take  it  as  the  utter- 
ance of  Jesus,  is  that  conception  of  Himself  and  of  His 
place  in  the  designs  of  God  which  it  reveals.  All  God's 
earlier  messengers  to  Israel  are  servants;  He  is  not 
servant  but  Son.  He  is  not  a  Son,  but  the  one  beloved 
Son  of  the  Father  eh,  ara-7]r6s,  ver.  6) ;  He  is  the  heir 
—all  that  is  the  Father's  is  His.  To  send  Him  is  to 
make  the  final  appeal;  to  reject  Him  is  to  commit  the 
sin  which  brings  Israel's  doom  in  its  train;  yet  even 
His  rejection  by  Israel  is  not  for  Him  final  defeat.  God 
will  yet  exalt  Him  and  put  the  inheritance  into  His  hands. 
In  the  circumstances  of  the  moment  it  was  inevitable 
that  Jesus  should  reflect  upon  God's  dealings  with  Israel 
and  His  own  place  in  them;  and  it  is  no  objection  to  His 
reflections  to  say  that  they  represent  the  mind  of  Chris- 
tians generally,  who  knew  He  had  been  crucified  yet 
believed  Him  to  be  the  Son  of  God.  He  believed  Him- 
self to  be  the  Son  of  God,  and  when  He  read  the  history 
of  Israel  in  His  filial  consciousness  it  unfolded  itself  to 
Him  as  we  see  it  in  this  allegory.  The  stupendous  thing 
here,  in  harmony  though  it  be  with  His  self-revelation  as 
a  whole,  is  the  place  which  He  assigns  to  Himself  in  the 
story.  It  justifies  the  attitude  of  the  New  Testament 
towards  Him,  but  it  is  gratuitous  to  say  that  it  is  the  pro- 
duct of  that  attitude.     The  converse  is  the  fact. 

David's  Son  and  David's  Lord 

(Mark  12  25"37) 

No  critical  difficulty  is  raised  about  this  passage,  and 
the  theological  discussions  to  which  it  has  given  rise 
hardly  concern  us.  It  will  be  universally  admitted  that 
in  the  mind  of  Jesus  'son  of  David'  was  at  least  an  inade- 
quate description  of  the  Messiah.  David  might  have 
many  sons  by  natural  descent,  but  as  only  one  of  them 
could  be  the  Messiah,  it  must  have  been  something  dis- 


i 


312  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

tinct  from  natural  descent  which  gave  Him  his  title. 
No  doubt  those  who  hoped  for  the  coming  of  the  son  of 
David  meant  by  the  term  one  who  would  inherit  all  that 
David  represented  to  a  patriotic  Jew — a  hero  king  who 
would  restore  the  national  independence  and  empire. 
To  Jesus  this  was  as  insufficient  a  title  to  Messiahship 
as  physical  descent  itself.  Whether  He  repudiated  the 
physical  descent  as  He  repudiated  the  political  ambitions 
need  not  be  discussed:  what  is  clear  from  the  passage 
as  a  whole  is  that,  in  the  mind  of  Jesus,  Messiahship 
depends  not  on  a  relation  to  David,  but  on  a  relation 
to  God.  How  this  relation  is  conditioned,  physically  or 
metaphysically,  we  are  not  told;  but  the  Messiah  is  the 
person  to  whom  God  says,  '  Sit  on  my  right  hand,  till  I 
make  thine  enemies  the  footstool  of  thy  feet.'  Jesus  did 
not  discuss  questions  of  this  kind  at  random:  His  inter- 
est in  the  current  ways  of  conceiving  the  Messiah  was 
connected  with  the  fact  that  He  was  Himself  fulfilling 
the  Messianic  vocation.  Of  all  Old  Testament  passages, 
that  which  is  most  frequently  referred  to  in  the  New  is 
the  opening  verse  of  Psalm  no,  with  its  mention  of  the 
right  hand  of  God;  and  this  way  of  representing  the  ex- 
altation of  the  Messiah  goes  back,  as  we  see,  to  Jesus 
Himself.  The  heavenly  voice  which  spoke  to  Him  at 
the  opening  of  His  ministry  in  the  words  of  one  Psalm, 
'Thou  art  my  Son,'  speaks  in  His  soul  at  the  close  of  it 
in  the  corresponding  and,  if  possible,  more  exalted  words 
of  another,  '  Sit  at  my  right  hand. '  This  is  an  immediate 
inference  from  the  fact  that  Jesus  regarded  Himself  as 
Messiah.  We  cannot  enter  into  the  elevation  which  these 
words  convey.  Even  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  only  im- 
perfectly illustrates  them.  But  they  are  involved  in  the 
Messianic  consciousness  of  Jesus,  and  they  justify  all 
that  Christians  mean  when  they  call  Him  Lord.1 

1  If  we  limited  our  view  to  Jesus'  criticism  of  '  Son  of  David,'  as  an 


THE   DATE   OF  THE   PAROUSIA  313 

The  Date  of  the  Parousia 

(Mark  13  82) 

We  have  already  referred  elsewhere  (p.  239)  to  the 
well-known  word  in  which  Jesus  declares  that  'of  that 
day  or  hour  no  one  knows,  not  even  the  angels  in  heaven, 
nor  the  Son,  but  the  Father.'  It  is  needless  to  say  that 
it  has  been  disputed,  but  it  may  be  worth  while  to  indicate 
the  purely  subjective  grounds  on  which  this  is  done. 
When  Jesus  was  asked  about  the  precise  date  of  the 
Messianic  advent,  He  declared  roundly,  says  Loisy,2 
that  this  was  the  secret  of  the  heavenly  Father:  all  He 
could  guarantee  was  that  the  Kingdom  of  heaven  would 
appear  suddenly  and  unexpectedly;  no  one  would  have 
foreseen  it,  hardly  any  one  would  have  given  it  a  thought. 
This  is  set  down  as  the  declaration  of  Jesus,  and  then 
M.  Loisy  proceeds:  'In  the  form  which  Mark  has  given 
it,  it  seems  to  suggest  an  apologetic  preoccupation,  as 
though  there  were  a  desire  to  justify  the  Christ  for  not 
having  indicated  the  date  of  an  advent  which  was  clearly 
being  delayed,  by  alleging  that  according  to  Jesus  Himself 
this  was  a  point  of  which  the  angels  were  ignorant,  and  of 
which  the  Messiah  might  well  be  ignorant  too/  Could 
arbitrariness  be  more  wantonly  arbitrary  than  this?  'The 
form  which  Mark  has  given'  to  the  utterance  of  Jesus  is 
the  only  form  in  which  we  know  anything  about  it;  to 

adequate  description  of  the  Messiah,  we  might  say  that  this  passage  was 
on  a  level  with  those  belonging  to  our  other  early  source  in  which  He 
speaks  of  Himself  as  'more  than  Jonah,'  'more  than  Solomon,'  'more 
than  the  Temple'  (see  p.  250);  but  the  words  in  which  God  addresses 
the  Messiah,  and  which  it  is  impossible  to  leave  out  of  account,  lift  us  to 
a  far  greater  height.  One  may  say  this  without  going  as  far  as  Dalman, 
who  (referring  to  Isaiah  49  5,  Jer.  i5)  thinks  it  would  only  be  natural  that 
Jesus  being  'the  Son,'  as  distinguished  from  all  servants,  should  presup- 
pose, not  merely  selection  and  predestination,  but  also  a  creative  act  on 
the  part  of  God,  rendering  Him  what  no  one,  who  stands  in  a  merely 
natural  connexion  with  mankind,  can  ever  by  his  own  efforts  become. — 
The  Words  0}  Jesus,  p    286. 

2  Les  Evangiles  Synoptiques,  ii.  438. 


3i4  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

assume  that  we  know  what  Jesus  meant,  apart  from  this, 
and  on  the  strength  of  this  assumed  knowledge  of  His 
meaning  to  criticise  Mark's  record  of  His  words,  is  simply 
unreal.  There  is  something  almost  naive  in  the  assertion 
that  in  the  circumstances  in  which  Jesus  preached  the 
gospel  it  ought  to  have  been  enough  (devait  suffire)  to  de- 
clare that  the  date  in  question  was  the  secret  of  the  Father; 
there  was  no  need  to  say  more  than,  No  one  knows 
but  the  Father.1  Things  do  not  happen  in  accordance 
with  our  a  priori  notions  of  what  ought  to  be  adequate  in 
the  circumstances;  and  the  real  ground  on  which  this 
saying  is  rejected  is  unambiguously  given  in  what  follows. 
'The  use  of  the  term  Son,  without  qualification,  to  desig- 
nate the  Saviour,  does  not  belong  to  the  language  of  Jesus 
nor  to  that  of  the  primitive  evangelic  tradition.'  This 
assertion,  however,  is  as  unsupported  as  it  is  peremptory. 
If  we  do  not  know  the  language  of  Jesus  and  that  of  the 
primitive  evangelic  tradition  through  Mark  and  the  other 
document  we  have  examined,  we  do  not  know  anything 
about  it,  and  this  unqualified  use  of  Son  is  common 
to  both  (see  p.  240).  To  eject  it  from  both  is  only  pos- 
sible if  we  reject  the  historical  evidence  altogether,  and 
proceed  on  a  dogmatic  assumption  that  Jesus  cannot  have 
been  conscious  of  such  a  relation  to  God  as  this  use  of 
the  term  implies.  But  our  whole  study  of  the  gospels 
has  brought  us  into  contact  with  a  Person  whose  con- 
sciousness of  His  relation  to  God  is  nothing  if  not  unique; 
and  there  is  no  reason,  with  the  evidence  of  the  two  most 
ancient  sources  in  our  hands,  to  doubt  that  on  occasion 
He  expressed  it  in  this  striking  way.  Nothing,  as  Schmie- 
del  has  insisted,  was  less  likely  to  be  invented  by  men 

1  It  is  rather  curious  that  Dalman,  who  also  rejects  the  evangelist's 
testimony  here,  and  ultimately  on  the  same  grounds  as  Loisy,  thinks 
that  the  original  saying  ran:  'Of  that  day  or  hour  not  even  the  angels 
in  heaven  know' — the  words  referring  to  the  Father  and  the  Son  being 
added  afterwards.— The  Words  of  Jesus,  194. 


THE  LAST  SUPPER  3X5 

who  worshipped  Christ  than  the  statement  in  this  text 
about  the  Son.  Far  from  serving  any  apologetic  purpose, 
it  called  itself  for  defence  which  Christians  were  often 
perplexed  to  give.1  The  circumstance  that  the  Son  is 
used  in  it,  in  a  sense  which  did  prevail  in  the  consciousness 
of  Christians  afterwards,  is  no  evidence  that  it  originated 
there;  it  only  shows  again  that  the  consciousness  of  Chris- 
tians is  not  unsupported  by  that  of  the  Christ. 

The  Last  Supper 

(Mark  14  "2'25) 

Nothing  in  the  gospel,  as  it  was  understood  by  its 
writer,  reveals  Jesus  more  clearly  than  the  Last  Supper. 
But  before  proceeding  to  this  involved  subject,  we  may 
refer  in  passing  to  the  memorable  word  recorded  as 
spoken  by  Jesus  at  the  anointing  at  Bethany:  'She  hath 
done  what  she  could :  she  hath  anointed  My  body  before- 
hand for  the  burying.  And  verily  I  say  unto  you,  where- 
soever the  gospel  shall  be  preached  throughout  the  whole 
world,  that  also  which  this  woman  hath  done  shall  be 
spoken  of  for  a  memorial  of  her'  (Mark  14  8  L).  We  must 
remember  that  when  these  words  were  spoken  Jesus' 
death  was  at  hand.  He  Himself  knew  it,  and  though 
probably  His  disciples  generally  were  far  enough  from 

1  The  writer  has  no  doubt  whatever  that  this  is  a  genuine  word  of  Jesus, 
and  just  as  little  doubt  that  it  must  be  taken  absolutely  as  a  disclaimer  on 
the  part  of  Jesus  of  all  knowledge  whatsoever  as  to  the  time  of  the  advent. 
To  say  that  one  does  not  know  the  day  or  the  hour  when  a  great  event  will 
happen  is  an  impressive  rhetorical  way  of  saying  that  He  does  not  know 
the  time  at  all;  and  we  can  easily  believe  that  Jesus  used  it  in  this  sense. 
It  is  hardly  conceivable  that  He  used  it  in  any  other.  If  it  is  taken,  not 
absolutely,  but  as  a  qualification  of  the  sentence  that  the  decisive  event 
in  question  will  certainly  happen  in  the  lifetime  of  living  men,  it  ceases 
to  be  impressive  and  becomes  trivial,  not  to  say  grotesque.  It  is  prac- 
tically incredible  that  Jesus  should  have  said  'All  this  will  happen  within 
a  generation,  but  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  man  or  angel,  no  nor  even  of 
the  Son,  to  fix  the  precise  date.'  But  if  Mark  13  32  is  not  to  be  taken  as 
a  qualification  of  Mark  13  30,  but  absolutely  and  by  itself,  the  probabilities 
are  that  in  spite  of  their  juxtaposition  in  the  Gospel  they  originally  re- 
ferred to  different  things. 


3i6  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

entering  into  His  mind,  there  was  one  person  near  who 
had  divined  that  they  could  not  have  Him  long  with  them, 
and  whose  heart  overflowed  in  this  passionate  demon- 
stration of  affection.  It  is  Jesus  who  puts  the  mournful 
poetic  interpretation  upon  the  act  of  the  woman — she 
hath  anointed  My  body  beforehand  for  the  burial;  it  is 
Jesus  also,  moved  by  a  love  so  generous,  who  solemnly 
rewards  it  with  an  immortality  of  renown.  The  criticism 
is  hardly  to  be  envied  which  finds  anything  here  to  ques- 
tion, yet  it  has  become  almost  a  commonplace  of  criticism 
in  a  certain  school  that  the  last  words  do  not  come  from 
Jesus,  but  are  the  reflection  of  a  Christian  preacher. 
One  can  understand  that  a  Christian  preacher  in  repeating 
them  might  involuntarily  change  'the  gospel'  (as  in  Mark) 
into  'this  gospel'  (as  in  Matthew) —thinking  as  he  spoke 
of  the  message  which  he  was  actually  delivering — but  it  is 
not  easy  to  understand  how  they  originated  in  preaching. 
It  may  be  that  Jesus  was  not  ordinarily  accustomed  to 
speak  of  'the  gospel'  or  of  'the  whole  world,'  but  the 
circumstances  were  not  ordinary,  and  He  must  have  had 
means  of  expressing  the  ideas  (cf .  13  10) .  Anything  which 
suddenly  and  deeply  moved  Him  seems  to  have  opened 
to  His  mind  the  vast  issues  of  His  work — the  devotion 
of  this  woman,  or  the  faith  of  the  centurion — which  called 
up  the  vision  of  the  multitudes  who  should  come  from 
the  East  and  the  West,  and  sit  down  with  Abraham,  Isaac, 
and  Jacob  in  the  Kingdom  of  God  (Matt.  810).  But 
there  is  a  more  serious  difficulty  in  the  way  of  ascribing 
this  saying  to  a  Christian  preacher,  and  then  supposing 
that  it  has  been  mistakenly  transferred  to  the  lips  of  Jesus. 
As  the  word  of  a  Christian  preacher  it  is  disagreeable, 
to  say  the  least — a  pompous  homiletical  extravagance, 
having  no  vital  relation  to  the  circumstances;  in  the  lips 
of  Jesus  and  in  the  historical  situation  it  is  living,  natural 
and  sublime — a  word  of  the  Lord  which  needs  no  attes- 


THE  LAST  SUPPER  317 

tation,  but  that  it  stands  where  it  does,  as  His  word.  Who 
could  so  reward  such  an  expression  of  devotion,  who 
could  think  of  so  rewarding  it,  but  He  who  was  touched  by 
its  passion  and  challenged  to  its  defence?  The  common 
sense,  not  to  say  the  general  heart,  of  man  may  safely 
be  appealed  to  here  against  the  pedantry  in  which  criti- 
cism sometimes  loses  its  way.1  The  interest  of  this  word 
of  Jesus  for  our  subject  is  that  it  virtually  identifies  Him — 
perhaps  it  would  not  be  too  much  to  say  that  in  particular 
it  virtually  identifies  the  story  of  His  death — with  the 
glad  tidings  to  be  brought  to  all  the  world.  The  anointing 
at  Bethany  is  in  Mark  the  prelude  to  the  passion :  it  is  as 
an  actor  in  the  opening  scene  of  the  great  drama  of  the 
redemption  that  this  woman  has  a  perpetual  memorial 
in  the  Church.  This  is  in  keeping  with  Mark  10 45  and 
with  what  we  shall  presently  find  in  the  narrative  of  the 
Supper,  but  we  cannot  think  this  agreement  unfavourable 
to  its  truth.  What  it  does  discredit  is  the  idea  that  in  its 
conception  of  the  gospel  the  Christian  Church  entered 
on  lines  not  only  unknown  to  the  mind  of  Jesus  but  di- 
rectly opposed  to  it.  If  the  Church  was  conscious  of  being 
redeemed  through  His  passion,  He  was  conscious  that 
through  His  passion  He  became  its  Redeemer. 

The  story  of  the  Supper,  so  far  as  we  are  here  con- 
cerned with  it,  is  given  in  Mark  i422ff-:  'And  as  they 
were  eating  He  took  bread,  and  when  He  had  blessed, 
He  brake  it  and  gave  to  them,  and  said,  Take  ye:  this 
is  My  body.  And  He  took  a  cup,  and  when  He  had 
given  thanks,  He  gave  to  them:  and  they  all  drank  of  it. 
And  He  said  unto  them,  This  is  My  blood  of  the  covenant, 
which  is  shed  for  many.  Verily  I  say  unto  you,  I  will  no 
more  drink  of  the  fruit  of  the  vine,  until  that   day  when 

1  A  striking  illustration  in  Loisy's  remark  ad  he.:  En  faisant  dire  a 
Jesus  que  cette  histoire  aura  sa  place  dans  l'£vangile,  Marc  donne  d 
entendre  qiCelle  rty  a  pas  toujours  Hi.     Really  ? 


3i8  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

I  drink  it  new  in  the  Kingdom  of  God. ' 1  A  much  longer 
volume  than  this  would  not  enable  one  to  describe  even 
in  outline  the  critical  treatment  of  these  seemingly  simple 
words.  They  purport  to  be  historical,  and  it  is  only  the 
most  'advanced'  criticism  which  has  radically  questioned 
their  character.  This  has  been  mainly  done  on  two 
grounds.  First,  it  is  said  that  on  the  ground  of  the  general 
character  of  Mark's  gospel,  Pauline  influence  may  be  as- 
sumed at  this  point  without  proof.  The  Pauline  affinities 
of  Mark  are  supposed  to  be  seen  in  his  use  of  the  term 
euayyifoov,  in  expressions  like  that  about  the  Son  of  Man 
giving  His  life  a  ransom  for  many,  and  in  the  frequent 
comments  on  the  inability  of  the  Twelve  to  understand 
the  doctrine  of  the  Cross — the  genuine  gospel  as  Paul 
preached  it.  In  the  passage  before  us  the  mention  of  the 
covenant,  in  particular,  is  alleged  to  be  Pauline:  the  dis- 
tinction of  the  old  and  the  new  covenant  was  one  of  which 
the  apostle  made  much  in  his  teaching,  whereas  in  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  the  term  covenant  does  not  occur  at  all. 
To  these  considerations,  jointly  and  severally,  we  can 
attach  but  little  weight.  We  have  seen  already  that 
there  is  no  reason  to  question,  in  most  of  them,  the  his- 
torical character  of  what  is  described  as  Pauline;  and 
it  is  a  violent  hypothesis  to  start  from,  that  what  pur- 
ports to  be  the  historical  account  of  a  solemn  hour  in  the 
intercourse  of  Jesus  and  the  Twelve,  only  found  currency 
in  the  Church — yet  did  find  it  universally — in  a  form  so 
pervaded  by  Pauline  ideas,  repellant  to  the  Twelve,  that 
its  historical  character  may  be  said  to  be  utterly  lost.  As 
for  the  use  of  the  term  covenant,  we  must  not  forget 
the  circumstances  of  the  hour.  The  Supper  had  some 
connexion,  more  or  less  intimate,  with  the  Passover;  and 
that  annual  sacrifice,  which  commemorated  and  ratified 
God's  covenant  with  Israel,  would  naturally  suggest  the 

1  See  The  Death  of  Christ,  pp.  46  ff . 


THE  LAST  SUPPER  319 

term — provided  the  thoughts  associated  with  it  were  in 
Jesus'  mind  at  the  time.  It  is  important,  too,  in  this 
connexion,  not  to  overestimate  the  place  of  the  idea  in 
the  mind  of  Paul.  Apart  from  the  passage  (1  Cor.  1 1 23  ff-) 
in  which  he  gives  his  account  of  this  same  event — a  pas- 
sage in  which  the  interpretative  word  'new'  may  be  his 
own — there  is  but  one  other  in  all  his  epistles  where  the 
same  use  is  found,  viz.  2  Corinthians,  chapter  3.  It  is 
precarious,  therefore,  to  argue  that  its  presence  here  is 
due  to  him;  and  while  there  is  no  indication  in  the  New 
Testament  that  the  liturgical  phraseology  connected  with 
the  Lord's  Supper  was  sacrosanct,  it  is  nevertheless 
thoroughly  improbable  that  an  influence  originating  with 
a  man  like  Paul,  who  was  the  centre  of  such  violent 
antipathies,  should  have  moulded  every  form  of  it  which 
obtained  recognition  in  the  Church.1 

The  second  ground  on  which  the  historical  character 
of  this  passage  has  been  questioned  is  internal  to  itself, 
yet  does  not  exclude  a  reference  to  Paul.  When  it  is 
closely  scrutinised,  it  is  said  to  betray  two  minds — two 
currents  of  thought — two  strata  of  ideas — two  'perspec- 
tives'— which  are  inconsistent  with  each  other.  The 
first  is  that  which  is  disclosed  in  vep.  25 :  '  Verily  I  say  unto 
you,  I  will  no  more  drink  of  the  fruit  of  the  vine  until 
that  day  when  I  drink  it  new  in  the  Kingdom  of  God.' 
Here,  it  is  said,  we  have  an  utterance  in  keeping  with 
the  situation,  and  entirely  intelligible  to  those  to  whom  it 
was  addressed.  Jesus  does  not  even  speak  expressly 
in  it  of  Himself  as  the  Messiah;  all  he  has  in  view  is  the 
imminent  coming  of  the  Kingdom;  it  is  His  adieu  to  the 
Twelve,  and  His  rendez-vous,  the  scene  of  the  latter  being 
the  Kingdom  of  God;  but  there  is  nothing  in  it  about 
His  death  or  His  resurrection.  The  words,  like  all  the 
genuine   words    of    Jesus,    maintain    the    perspective  of 

1  I  do  not  forget  the  Didache,  nor  the  perplexing  text  of  Luke  22  14~20. 


32o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

the  near  Messianic  advent,  and  this  is  the  token  that 
they  are  really  His.1  This  is  the  view  of  Loisy,  who 
admits  that  while  we  can  see  very  well  how  this  per- 
spective was  broken  by  what  actually  happened,  it 
is  less  possible  for  us  to  apprehend  clearly  the  manner 
in  which  faith,  after  the  passion,  could  derive  from  these 
eucharistic  words  the  Christian  sacrament.  It  is  not 
only  less  possible,  but  quite  impossible.  If  Jesus  did 
not  say  a  word  about  His  death  at  the  Supper,  then  an 
ordinance  which  has  its  raison  d'etre  in  the  proclamation 
of  His  death  cannot  by  any  ingenuity  be  derived  from 
His  words.  It  could  not  have  occurred  to  Paul  any  more 
than  to  anybody  else.  Paul  indeed  repudiates  in  the 
most  express  terms  any  suggestion  that  the  ordinance 
of  the  Lord's  Supper,  as  he  had  introduced  it  at  Corinth, 
owed  anything  to  Himself.  'I  received  of  the  Lord,' 
he  says,  'that  which  also  I  delivered  unto  you'  (i  Cor. 
ii23).  There  has  been  •  some  discussion  as  to  what 
exactly  Paul  means  by  referring  to  the  Lord  as  his 
authority  here,  but  surely  without  much  reason.  M. 
Loisy  argues  that  he  appeals  to  the  Lord  rather  than 
to  the  apostolic  tradition,  because  he  is  conscious,  un- 
doubtedly, that  he  is  not  merely  reporting  the  fact  of 
the  institution— his  knowledge  of  which  he  would  owe 
to  the  tradition  in  question— but  interpreting  it  at  the 
same  time  in  the  light  which  the  Lord  had  given  him. 
But  the  tradition,  in  what  M.  Loisy  regards  as  its  orig- 
inal form— the  only  form  in  which  Paul  could  become 
acquainted  with  it— is  in  no  sense  interpreted  in  i  Corin- 
thians ii  23f>;  on  M.  Loisy's  own  showing,  it  is  shunted, 
and  replaced  by  something  which  has  no  connexion  with 
it  whatever.  Or  if  we  suppose  that  a  faint  echo  of  it 
remains  in  'till  He  come'  (i  Cor.  n  2ft),  this  is  all  that 
remains:    the    words  which    Paul    gives  as    spoken  by 

1  Loisy,  Les  Evangiles  Synoptiques,  ii.  540. 


THE  LAST  SUPPER  321 

Jesus,  Jesus  did  not  speak,  and  the  words  which  Jesus 
did  speak  contained  no  suggestion  of  those  put  into  His 
lips  by  Paul.  We  do  not  get  over  these  difficulties  by 
suggesting  that  the  fusion  {melange)  of  history  and  of 
Pauline  theology  in  1  Corinthians  n23ff-,  and  thereafter 
in  Mark,  took  place  spontaneously,  in  the  subconscious 
region  of  the  soul,  where  dreams  and  visions  are  gener- 
ated; and  that  the  apostle  presented  a  vision  which  he 
had  had  as  a  reality,  without  troubling  himself  about  the 
circumstance  that  the  witnesses  of  the  Last  Supper  had 
not  attributed  to  Jesus  the  words  which  he  now  put 
into  His  lips.  The  vision  here,  we  must  remark,  is  a 
pure  hypothesis,  excogitated  by  a  modern  scholar  for 
the  support  of  another  hypothesis;  and  whether  it  be 
true  or  not  that  no  one  thought  in  those  days  of  keeping 
two  registers  of  Christian  teaching,  one  for  souvenirs 
evangeliques  and  the  other  for  revelations  de  V  Esprit — 
a  point  on  which,  with  both  gospels  and  epistles  in  our 
hands,  the  very  existence  of  which  affirms  the  distinc- 
tion, we  cannot  give  an  unqualified  assent  to  M.  Loisy 
— it  is  certain  that  there  is  a  far  simpler  explanation  of 
Paul's  reference  to  the  Lord.  It  is  not  the  only  thing 
of  the  kind  in  1  Corinthians.  The  Corinthians,  appar- 
ently, were  disposed  to  treat  Paul's  authority  rather 
lightly,  and  where  he  can  he  appeals  directly  to  Christ. 
In  the  seventh  chapter  he  does  so  as  explicitly  as  he 
does  here:  'To  the  married  I  give  charge,  not  I  but  the 
Lord'  (ver.  10):  'Now  concerning  virgins  I  have  no 
commandment  of  the  Lord'  (ver.  25).  No  one  talks 
about  visions  here:  the  Lord  is  referred  to  as  known 
in  the  apostolic  tradition  of  His  words,  which,  just  be- 
cause they  are  His,  are  for  Christians  an  authority  be- 
yond appeal.  It  is  the  same  in  the  account  of  the  Supper. 
The  Corinthians  were  taking  liberties  with  it,  pervert- 
ing it  into  a  celebration  of  their  own,  as  if  Paul  had 


322  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

instituted  it  of  his  own  motion,  and  they  might  treat 
it  as  they  pleased;  and  what  he  says  is,  It  is  not  my  or- 
dinance at  all,  but  Christ's.  It  is  on  His  authority 
it  rests,  and  in  His  dying  words  its  significance  is  de- 
clared. It  would  be  more  than  extraordinary  if,  in  con- 
ditions like  these,  Paul  wrote  to  the  Corinthians  in  the 
guise  of  a  historical  narrative  something  which  is  en- 
tirely destitute  of  historical  value.1  A  person  who  in 
such  circumstances  could  not  or  did  not  distinguish  be- 
tween matter  of  fact  attested  by  evidence  and  visions 
generated  in  the  subliminal  self  would  not  be  a  respon- 
sible person.  We  have  no  hesitation  therefore  in  hold- 
ing that  Paul  reproduces  the  apostolic  tradition  at  this 
point,  and  does  so  in  the  full  sense  of  its  value  as  a  his- 
torical authority  connecting  the  Supper  as  he  observed 
it  with  the  Lord  Himself.  To  say  that  'the  perspec- 
tive of  the  Messianic  festival  excludes  the  memorial 
of  the  death,'  is  obviously  to  say  what  the  authors  of 
the  gospels  did  not  feel,  what  Paul  did  not  feel,  what 
readers  of  the  New  Testament  have  never  felt.  There 
is  no  reason  in  the  nature  of  things  why  Jesus,  when 
He  ate  the  Last  Supper  with  His  Disciples,  should  not 
have  had  both  His  impending  death  and  His  ultimate 
triumph  present  to  His  mind,  and  we  need  have  no 
difficulty  in  accepting  the  evidence  that  He  did  think 
and  speak  of  both.  The  references  to  His  body  and 
blood  do  not  belong  to  another  stratum  of  thought, 
inconsistent  with  that  which  speaks  of  drinking  the  wine 

1  Ce  serait  meconnaitre  entierement  l'etat  d'esprit  des  premiers  cro- 
yants  que  de  voir  dans  cette  circonstanee  une  impossibility  comme  si 
Paul  avait  du  rejeter  sa  vision — that  is,  the  vision  imagined  for  Him  by 
M.  Loisy — parceque  les  anciens  disciples  ne  lui  avaient  pas  raconte  le 
dernier  repas  en  cette  forme,  et  comme  si  le  recit  de  Paul,  suppose  qu'il 
soit  venu  a  la  connaissance  de  Pierre  ou  de  quelque  autre  temoin,  avait 
du  provoquer  un  dementi  formel,  qu'on  se  serait  fait  une  obligation  de 
repandre  dans  toutes  les  communautes.  Loisy,  ii.  532  n.  1. — The  Death 
oj  Christ,  1 1 2  f . 


THE  LAST  SUPPER  323 

new  in  the  Kingdom  of  God;  they  are  part  of  a  whole 
which  filled  His  thoughts,  and  which  He  revealed  in  preg- 
nant words  to  His  friends.  No  doubt  they  could  only 
grasp  them  imperfectly  at  the  moment,  but  it  is  a  mistake 
to  say  that  they  can  only  be  understood  in  the  context 
of  Paul's  theology.  They  could  arrest,  fascinate,  move, 
and  stimulate  the  mind;  they  were  there  thenceforth 
with  the  authority  of  Jesus  for  Christian  thought  to 
brood  upon.  Without  discussing  their  authenticity  fur- 
ther, we  have  now  to  ask  what  light  they  cast  on  Jesus' 
consciousness  of  Himself. 

It  is  the  nature  of  a  symbol  that  it  can  be  set  in  different 
lights,  and  always  seems  to  call  for  further  interpre- 
tation. But  from  the  very  beginning,  the  symbolism 
of  the  Supper  and  the  words  which  gave  the  key  to  it 
spoke  unambiguously  to  the  Christian  mind.  They 
spoke  of  Jesus  giving  Himself,  in  His  body  and  blood, 
in  all  the  reality  of  His  humanity  and  His  passion,  to 
be  the  meat  and  drink  of  the  soul.  They  spoke  of  a 
covenant  based  on  His  sacrifice  of  Himself — not  merely 
a  bond  in  which  believers  realised  their  brotherhood, 
but  a  new  relation  to  God  into  which  they  entered  at 
the  cost  of  His  life.  They  spoke  of  a  transcendent 
kingdom  in  which  all  the  hopes  and  yearnings  of  earth 
would  be  fulfilled,  and  in  which  the  Master,  who  was 
about  to  die,  would  celebrate  His  reunion  with  His 
followers  in  a  world  where  death  and  sorrow  have  ceased 
to  be.  We  cannot  think  that  less  than  this  was  in  the 
mind  of  Jesus  when  He  said,  'This  is  My  body — this 
is  My  covenant  blood — I  will  drink  no  more  of  the  fruit 
of  the  vine  till  I  drink  it  new  with  you  in  the  Kingdom 
of  God.'  But  no  Christian  faith  ever  put  Jesus  in  a 
more  central  and  commanding  place  than  this.  It 
is  not  a  place  which  can  either  be  taken  or  shared  by 
another;  it  is  all  His  own.     This  unique  and  extraor- 


324  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

dinary  place  is  not  only  given  to  him,  but  taken  by 
Him.  It  is  not  taken  only  when  it  is  thrust  upon  Him; 
it  is  assumed  in  the  words  He  here  speaks,  and  in  the 
symbolic  acts  which  accompany  them,  before  any  one 
has  seen  what  they  involve.  The  experience  of  the 
Church  for  two  thousand  years  justifies  the  self-as- 
sertion, or  rather  we  should  say  the  self- revelation, 
of  Jesus  in  the  Supper,  but  it  is  not  the  Church's  ex- 
perience which  is  reflected  in  the  narrative.  The  same 
wonderful  Person  whose  incommensurable  greatness  has 
already  flashed  upon  us  in  this  scene  or  that  of  the  gos- 
pel history  here  rises  as  it  were  to  His  full  stature  before 
our  eyes,  and  shows  us  the  ultimate  meaning  of  His 
Presence  and  His  work  in  the  world.  The  revela- 
tion is  one  that  justifies  all  that  Christians  have  ever 
felt  or  said  of  their  debt  to  Jesus;  and  it  is  one  of  the 
services  the  Supper  does  to  the  Church,  that  it  recalls 
Christians  periodically  to  the  things  which  are  funda- 
mental in  their  faith — the  atoning  death  of  Jesus,  fellow- 
ship with  God  through  Him,  the  assurance  of  immortality. 
We  do  not  feel  it  presumptuous  to  conceive  such  thoughts 
or  to  accept  them  as  true;  they  are  in  the  mind  of  Christ 
before  they  are  in  our  minds,  and  we  rest  on  them  as 
realities  in  Him. 

The  Final  Confession 

(Mark  14  *2 

The  trial  of  Jesus  presents  many  difficulties  to  the 
historical  student,  but  it  is  an  excess  of  scepticism  which 
would  question  the  one  reference  to  be  made  to  it  here. 
As  J.  Weiss  has  remarked,1  there  were  ways  of  knowing 
what  took  place  at  the  meeting  of  the  Sanhedrin.  Jesus 
had  at  least  one  adherent  there,  Joseph  of  Arimathea; 
and  it   is  simply  inconceivable  that  His  friends  should 

1  Die  Sclirijten  des  Ncuen  Testaments,  197. 


THE  FINAL  CONFESSION  325 

not,  after  His  death,  have  made  the  most  interested 
inquiries.  The  grounds  of  His  condemnation  must  have 
been  discussed  in  Jerusalem  between  His  older  followers 
and  His  enemies,  and  the  evangelists  certainly  believed 
what  they  have  put  on  record.  That  there  are  dis- 
crepancies in  their  accounts  is  indubitable,  and  that  Luke 
in  particular  does  not  at  this  point  follow  Mark  as  he 
usually  does  in  narrative,  but  represents  an  independent 
tradition,  is  also,  in  the  opinion  of  the  writer,  indubitable; 
but  the  divergences  are  for  our  purpose  immaterial. 
According  to  Mark,  the  council  had  considerable  diffi- 
culty in  finding  a  ground  on  which  to  condemn  Jesus. 
'They  sought  witness  against  Him  to  put  Him  to  death 
and  did  not  find  it'  (14 55).  The  witnesses  lied,  and 
were  not  even  coherent  or  consistent  in  their  lies.  The 
most  promising  were  some  who  asserted  that  they  had 
heard  Jesus  say,  'I  will  destroy  this  temple  made  with 
hands,  and  after  three  days  I  will  build  another  not 
made  with  hands'  (14 58).  The  Temple,  as  the  dwelling- 
place  of  God,  was  sacred,  and  to  violate  it,  as  Well- 
hausen  points  out,  was  still,  as  in  the  days  of  Micah  and 
Jeremiah,  a  blasphemy  against  God  punishable  with 
death.  But  it  is  quite  needless  to  argue  with  him  that 
this  was  the  blasphemy  for  which  Jesus  was  condemned, 
and  that  the  reluctance  of  Christians  of  the  early  days  to 
admit  that  Jesus  could  have  said  anything  disrespectful 
to  the  Temple  led  them  to  misrepresent  the  truth,  and  to 
introduce  as  the  ground  of  condemnation  another  charge 
—that  of  claiming  to  be  the  Christ— which  does  not 
involve  blasphemy  at  all.  It  is  not  clear  what  Jesus 
said  about  the  Temple.  In  Mark  13 2  He  predicts  its 
destruction  in  the  most  explicit  terms;  and  as  both 
Matthew  and  Luke  copy  them,  early  Christians  do  not 
seem  to  have  been  so  embarrassed  as  Wellhausen  sup- 
poses.    But   whatever   He   had   said,   the   representation 


326  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

of  His  words  by  the  witnesses  was  so  wanting  in  con- 
sistency that  after  all  it  was  found  impossible  to  proceed 
upon  it  (14 59).  The  council  wished  to  maintain  the 
appearance  of  legality,  and  after  a  vain  attempt  to  get 
Jesus  to  compromise  Himself  about  the  Temple,  the 
chief  priest  took  another  line.  He  brought  up  the  Mes- 
siahship  of  Jesus.  This  implies  that,  though  Jesus 
was  not  in  the  habit  of  publicly  declaring  Himself  to  be 
the  Messiah,  the  idea  was  somehow  or  other  associated 
with  His  name:  the  triumphal  entry  into  Jerusalem,  and 
the  excitement  and  significant  cries  which  accompanied 
it,  are  evidence  that  this  was  so.  We  may  assume  that 
the  chief  priest,  when  he  said  to  Jesus,  Art  thou  the 
Christ,  the  Son  of  the  Blessed?  had  in  view  the  formu- 
lation of  a  charge  on  which  Jesus  could  be  arraigned 
before  Pilate.  The  Christ,  however  qualified,  means 
the  King;  and  it  was  as  King  of  the  Jews,  a  rival  to 
Caesar,  that  Jesus  was  to  be  delated  to  the  governor. 
In  this  character,  too,  He  actually  was  presented  and 
sentenced  to  die,  as  the  inscription  on  the  Cross  proves. 
But  His  answer  to  the  priest's  appeal — or  as  Matthew 
puts  it,  to  his  adjuration — goes  far  beyond  a  bare  assent, 
1  Jesus  said,  I  am,  and  ye  shall  see  the  Son  of  Man  sitting 
on  the  right  hand  of  power,  and  coming  with  the  clouds 
of  heaven'  (14 62).  It  is  as  though  at  the  supreme  mo- 
ment of  His  life  Jesus  fully  revealed  the  secret  of  what  He 
was.  'I  am  the  Christ'  means  'I  am  the  promised  King, 
He  through  whom  God's  purposes  are  to  be  fulfilled  and 
His  sovereignty  established;  I  am  the  Christ,  as  the 
future  will  gloriously  declare.'  It  is  needless  to  argue 
that  for  the  evangelist  and  his  readers  the  Speaker  and 
the  Son  of  Man  were  one  and  the  same;  and  the  inde- 
pendent tradition  in  Luke  makes  it  clear  that  this  was  so 
also  for  those  who  were  immediately  addressed  (Luke 
22 fl6'70).     They   perceived   that    Jesus   was   making   for 


THE  FINAL  CONFESSION  327 

Himself  an  astounding,  and  what  they  considered,  or 
affected  to  consider,  a  blasphemous  claim,  and  it  was 
on  the  ground  of  it  that  their  condemnation  of  Him 
rested.  It  is  idle  to  say  that  there  was  nothing  blasphe- 
mous in  claiming  to  be  the  Messiah,  and  that  such  a  claim 
could  not  explain  the  action  of  the  council;  the  council 
was  not  scrupulous,  and  this  particular  Messianic  claim, 
made  by  this  particular  person,  with  such  threatening 
assurance,  might  well  seem  to  them  the  very  kind  of  inso- 
lent impiety  to  which  the  name  blasphemy  belonged.  It 
led  in  fact  directly  to  His  death. 

In  this  self-assertion  or  self-revelation  of  Jesus  there 
is  in  a  sense  nothing  new.  He  has  said  substantially 
the  same  thing  before  (Mark  91,  Matt.  16 28,  Luke  g27). 
It  expresses  indeed  the  consciousness  in  which  He  lived 
and  died— the  sense  of  Himself,  and  of  His  vocation 
and  destiny  by  which  the  gospels  are  filled  from  begin- 
ning to  end.  All  that  is  exhibited  in  the  noth  Psalm 
('Sit  thou  on  My  right  hand')— all  that  is  exhibited  in 
the  seventh  chapter  of  Daniel  ('the  Son  of  Man,'  'com- 
ing with  the  clouds  of  heaven')— is  to  be  fulfilled  in 
Him.  The  sovereignty  of  God,  which  means  the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  human,  as  opposed  to  the  brutal  and 
unjust,  is  in  Him  to  have  its  consummation.  The  form 
in  which  this  is  put  has  often  proved  disconcerting; 
Jesus,  it  is  said,  has  not  come  with  the  clouds  of  heaven; 
and  if  He  were  under  a  delusion  about  this,  can  we  trust 
His  consciousness  of  Himself  at  all?  Reference  has 
been  made  above  to  the  symbolical  element  in  all  such 
language— Daniel  7,  for  example,  is  symbolical  through- 
out; but  it  is  permissible  here  to  refer  to  the  fact  that 
both  Matthew  and  Luke  give  the  words  of  Jesus  with  a 
certain  qualification.  Matthew  (26 64)  has:  Henceforth 
(a*'  apn)  ye  shall  see  the  Son  of  Man  seated;  and  Luke 
(22  69),  But  from  this  time  (d-d  rod  vDv)  shall  the  Son  of 


328  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

Man  be  seated.  These  qualifications  become  impor- 
tant when  we  consider  that  Luke  here  represents  a  tra- 
dition which  is  independent  of  Mark,  so  that  he  is  not 
modifying  Mark's  record,  and  that  there  is  no  probability 
that  he  knew  anything  of  Matthew.  They  suggest  that 
from  a  very  early  period,  a  period  antecedent  to  all  our 
evangelists,  the  words  of  Jesus  were  current  in  the  Church 
in  a  form  which  requires  a  spiritual  rather  than  a  trans- 
cendent interpretation.  It  is  no  remote  future  to  which 
Jesus  appeals;  the  fulfilment  of  His  words  begins  with 
the  moment  at  which  they  are  spoken.  His  enemies 
think  they  have  expelled  Him  from  the  world,  but  from 
the  very  moment  of  their  triumph  His  victory  sets  in. 
He  filled  Jerusalem  from  His  death  onward  as  He  had 
never  done  in  His  life;  it  was  impossible  to  escape  His 
Presence  or  His  Power;  the  Council  had  more  to  do  with 
Him,  was  made  more  sensible  of  His  predominance,  found 
His  challenge  more  inevitable,  in  the  early  days  of  Acts 
than  in  the  period  of  the  gospel  history.  Possibly  it  is  in 
this  line,  which  allows  for  the  symbolical  character  of 
the  words,  rather  than  through  a  literal  rendering  of  them, 
that  the  meaning  of  Jesus  is  to  be  sought.  In  any  case 
He  identifies  Himself,  in  the  last  solemn  utterance  of  His 
life,  with  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God;  the  coming 
of  that  kingdom  means  His  own  exaltation  and  return  in 
glory;  and  however  we  may  picture  it — may  we  not  say 
reverently,  However,  in  the  days  of  His  flesh,  He  pictured 
it— the  certainty  of  it  is  one  to  Him  with  His  very  being. 
In  speaking  as  He  speaks  here,  he  puts  Himself  in  the 
place  which  He  holds  throughout  the  New  Testament; 
that  place  is  given  to  Him  only  because  He  claims  it  as 
His  own. 


CONCLUSION 

We  have  now  completed  our  examination  of  the  two 
questions  with  which  we  started.  The  first  was:  Has 
Christianity  existed  from  the  beginning  only  in  the  form 
of  a  faith  which  has  Jesus  as  its  object,  and  not  at  all  in 
the  form  of  a  faith  which  has  had  Jesus  simply  as  its 
living  pattern?  and  the  second:  Can  Christianity,  as 
even  the  New  Testament  exhibits  it,  justify  itself  by 
appeal  to  Christ?  To  both  questions  the  answer  must 
be  in  the  affirmative.  The  most  careful  scrutiny  of  the 
New  Testament  discloses  no  trace  of  a  Christianity  in 
which  Jesus  has  any  other  place  than  that  which  is  as- 
signed Him  in  the  faith  of  the  historical  Church.  When 
the  fullest  allowance  is  made  for  the  diversities  of  in- 
tellectual and  even  of  moral  interest  which  prevail  in 
the  different  writers  and  the  Christian  societies  which 
they  address,  there  is  one  thing  in  which  they  are  in- 
distinguishable— the  attitude  of  their  souls  to  Christ. 
They  all  set  Him  in  the  same  incomparable  place.  They 
all  acknowledge  to  Him  the  same  immeasurable  debt. 
He  determines,  as  no  other  does  or  can,  all  their  relations 
to  God  and  to  each  other.  While  His  true  manhood 
is  unquestionably  assumed,  He  is  set  as  unquestionably 
on  the  side  of  reality  which  we  call  Divine  and  which 
confronts  man;  He  embodies  for  faith  that  Divine  love  and 
power  which  work  out  man's  salvation.  It  is  the  place 
thus  assigned  to  Christ  which  gives  its  religious  unity  to 
the  New  Testament,  and  which  has  kept  the  Christian 
religion  one  all  through  its  history.     And  so  with  regard 

329 


330  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

to  the  second  question.  When  we  look  back  from  the 
Christian  religion  as  the  New  Testament  exhibits  it,  and 
as  it  is  still  exhibited  in  the  Christian  Church,  to  the  his- 
torical Jesus,  we  see  a  Person,  who  is  not  only  equal  to 
the  place  which  Christian  faith  assigns  Him,  but  who 
assumes  that  place  naturally  and  spontaneously  as  His 
own.  Partly  the  inevitable  ascendency  which  He  ex- 
ercised over  those  around  Him,  and  the  unspeakable  obliga- 
tions under  which  He  laid  them  in  their  life  toward  God, 
evoked  within  them  the  sense  of  what  was  due  to  Jesus; 
but  partly  also  Jesus  revealed  His  consciousness  of  what  He 
was,  of  what  He  was  doing,  and  of  what  He  claimed 
from  men,  in  startling  and  unparalleled  words.  The 
resurrection  of  Jesus,  and  His  consciousness  of  Himself 
as  thus  revealed,  are  at  once  the  guarantee  and  justifica- 
tion of  the  historical  Christian  faith. 

Before  proceeding  to  what  seem  the  inevitable  infer- 
ences from  this,  it  may  be  worth  while  to  refer  in  passing 
to  two  objections  which  are  sure  to  present  themselves 
to  some  minds.  On  the  one  hand,  there  are  those  to 
whom  the  questions  raised  are  in  their  very  nature  irk- 
some; it  seems  to  them  absurd  that  religion,  the  higher 
life  of  the  spirit,  should  be  in  any  way  entangled  in  such 
investigations,  or  dependent  on  their  results.  It  must, 
they  think,  live  upon  immediate  certainties  of  its  own, 
be  the  answers  what  they  may  to  questions  of  the  kind 
we  have  been  considering.  This  mental  temper  is  widely 
diffused.  It  speaks,  for  example,  in  the  broad  distinc- 
tion which  is  sometimes  drawn  between  Faith  and  Knowl- 
edge. 'In  Faith,'  to  quote  Goethe  as  representing  this 
view,  'everything  depends  on  the  fact  of  believing;  what 
we  believe  is  quite  secondary.  Faith  is  a  profound  sense 
of  security,  springing  from  confidence  in  the  All-powerful, 
Inscrutable  Being.  The  strength  of  this  confidence  is  the 
main  point.     But  what  we  think  of  this  Being  depends 


FAITH   AND   KNOWLEDGE  331 

on  other  faculties,  or  even  on  other  circumstances,  and  is 
altogether  indifferent.'  What  we  are  concerned  with, 
however,  is  not  faith  indefinitely,  faith  as  a  profound  sense 
of  security  springing  from  confidence  in  a  Being  of  whom 
we  know  nothing,  but  faith  in  a  specifically  Christian 
sense — that  is,  faith  with  characteristics  or  qualities  or 
virtues  which  are  somehow  due  to  Christ.  It  is  idle  to 
say  that  this  is  independent  of  what  we  know  of  Christ. 
It  is  Christ  known  who  makes  it  what  it  is:  we  have 
Christian  faith  only  as  we  believe  in  God  through  Him. 
The  same  criticism  is  applicable  to  the  famous  aphorism 
of  Lessing,  to  which  so  many  have  appealed  as  a  way  of 
shaking  off  the  spiritual  bondage  (as  they  think  it)  of 
subjection  to  history:  'accidental  truths  of  history  can 
never  become  the  proof  of  necessary  truths  of  reason.' 
Christianity  does  not  mean  the  recognition  of  necessary 
truths  of  reason,  but  an  attitude  of  the  soul  to  God,  de- 
termined by  Christ;  and  history  is  not  to  the  religious  man 
a  chapter  of  accidents,  but  the  stage  on  which  a  Divine 
purpose  is  achieved  which  could  not  be  more  ineptly 
described  than  by  calling  it  accidental.  Religion  can  no 
more  be  simplified  by  making  it  independent  of  history 
than  respiration  would  be  simplified  by  soaring  beyond 
the  atmosphere.  What  we  have  always  to  do,  after 
making  such  distinctions  as  have  been  illustrated  from 
Goethe  and  Lessing,  is  to  transcend  them.  Our  vital 
convictions,  the  faiths  by  which  we  live,  are  not  formed 
in  vacuo;  they  are  generated  in  us  by  what  has  happened. 
If  the  past  is  eliminated  from  the  present,  the  historical 
from  the  eternal,  it  is  hard  to  say  what  is  left.  The  his- 
torical realities  which  we  have  been  considering — the 
Personality,  the  Self-consciousness,  the  Resurrection,  the 
growing  Ascendency  of  Jesus — are  anything  but  'con- 
tingent historical  truths.'  Whatever  we  mean  when  we 
speak  of  Divine  necessity  may  be  predicated  of  all.     Al- 


X 


332  JESUS   AND  THE   GOSPEL 

though  Christianity  is  a  historical  religion,  its  saving 
truth  is  not  only  in  the  past;  it  is  here,  in  the  living  Christ 
and  in  the  experience  of  Christians.  It  has  its  founda- 
tion laid  in  historical  facts,  no  doubt;  but  it  has  at  the 
same  time  its  witness  in  itself,  for  the  consciences  of  sin- 
ful men,  needing  and  seeking  God.  It  is  the  combina- 
tion of  the  historical  fact  in  the  past  with  its  Divine  mean- 
ing and  relevance  in  the  present,  in  which  the  whole  weight 
of  the  evidence  lies;  and  it  is  the  testimony  of  believers, 
speaking  in  the  power  of  the  spirit,  which  is  used  by  God 
to  make  the  historical  eternal— that  is,  to  make  it  living, 
present,  and  divinely  strong  to  save. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  those  who  on  critical 
grounds,  or  what  they  believe  to  be  such,  will  demur 
to  the  answer  we  have  given,  to  the  second  of  our  two 
questions.  That  answer,  they  will  hold,  ascribes  to  our 
gospels  a  higher  historical  value  than  they  possess.  The 
real  way  to  look  at  these  documents  is  that  which  recog- 
nises that  they  mark  stages  in  a  process  which  began 
with  Jesus,  but  which  terminates  in  the  prologue  to  the 
fourth  gospel,  or  even  in  the  Nicene  Creed.  This  pro- 
cess, which  we  may  call  that  of  idealising  Jesus,  or  repre- 
senting Him  in  history  as  acting  in  the  role  which  He 
fills  in  Christian  faith,  was  not  indeed  completed  when 
our  gospels  were  written,  but  it  had  gone  a  considerable 
way.  It  had  gone  so  far,  in  fact,  that  the  historical 
Jesus  is  irrecoverably  lost  to  us;  we  do  not  know  what 
He  was,  we  only  know  how  those  who  believed  in  Him 
represented  Him  to  their  own  minds.  The  plausibility  of 
such  statements  depends  entirely  upon  their  generality, 
and  as  soon  as  we  come  to  close  quarters  with  Him  it 
disappears.  In  investigating  our  second  question  we 
did  not  appeal  to  the  gospels  without  criticism,  but  to 
the  two  oldest  documentary  sources  which  criticism  has 
recognised— Mark,   and   a  non-Marcan   source  used  by 


THE  TRUTH   OF  THE   GOSPELS         333 

Matthew  and  Luke.  These  represent  what  was  believed 
and  taught  of  Jesus  in  the  Christian  Church  during  the 
sixties  of  the  first  century.  This  is  a  period  at  which 
many  who  knew  Jesus  must  have  survived,  and  there 
are  sound  reasons  for  believing  that  the  two  documents 
named  were  connected  with  two  members  of  the  apos- 
tolic circle — Mark  being  indirectly  dependent  on  Peter, 
while  the  non-Marcan  document  was  probably  the  work 
of  Matthew.  Even  if  we  admit  the  process  of  idealising 
to  be  real,  these  are  fair  guarantees  for  a  close  connexion 
with  history.  But  the  process  is  often  exaggerated  and 
misconceived.  If  we  start  behind  all  the  evidence,  with 
an  assumed  Jesus  who  is  exactly  what  other  men  are,  of 
course  there  is  an  immense  amount  of  idealising  to  be 
allowed  for;  everything  in  short,  is  idealising — that  is, 
everything  is  imaginary  and  fictitious — by  which  Jesus  is 
brought  into  a  positive  connexion  with  the  Christian 
religion.  Obviously  this  is  an  unsound  mode  of  arguing. 
Jesus  had  unquestionably  a  positive  connexion  with  the 
Christian  religion.  It  owes  its  being  to  an  impulse  com- 
municated by  Him.  But  that  impulse  cannot  have  been 
alien  to  the  phenomena  which  it  generated;  there  must 
have  been  that  in  Jesus  which  was  in  some  kind  of  keep- 
ing with  the  idealisation  of  Him  in  the  Church's  faith. 
To  admit  this,  however,  is  to  admit  that  the  Jesus  ex- 
actly like  ourselves  who  is  assumed  to  stand  behind  the 
gospel  history,  is  an  illegitimate  assumption;  if  He  had 
been  no  more  than  we  are,  the  wonder  of  the  Christian 
religion  and  of  the  New  Testament  would  never  have 
come  to  be.  The  necessity  of  maintaining  continuity 
between  Jesus  and  the  movement  which  issued  from  Him, 
when  taken  in  connexion  with  the  closeness  of  the  wit- 
nesses to  the  facts,  creates  a  presumption  in  favour  of  the 
historical  representation  of  the  oldest  sources  which  goes 
far  to  balance  the  idealising  process  referred  to.     Further, 


334  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

as  we  have  seen  already,  there  is  a  self -guaranteeing  power 
in  the  inner  life  of  Jesus  which  assures  us  we  are  in  con- 
tact with  reality  in  the  gospels;  the  spiritual  truth  is  so 
unquestionable  that  it  carries  the  conviction  of  historical 
truth  along  with  it.  The  mind  of  Christ,  as  we  have 
come  in  contact  with  it  in  those  two  ancient  authorities, 
does  not  strike  us  at  all  as  a  product  of  idealising  or 
theologising  tendencies  in  the  mind  of  the  Church.  We 
know  what  theology  is,  we  know  what  poetry  is,  and  the 
most  significant  utterances  in  which  Jesus  reveals  Him- 
self have  not  the  character  of  either  the  one  or  the  other. 
They  are  vital,  individual,  unparalleled.  The  more 
closely  they  are  studied,  the  more  apparent  it  becomes 
that  they  must  be  taken  at  their  full  value  if  we  are  to  see 
what  Jesus  was  and  what  place  He  claimed  in  the  rela- 
tions of  God  and  man.  It  is  well  worth  observing,  too,  in 
a  matter  in  which  some  minds  are  sure  to  be  impressed  by 
authorities,  that  the  two  most  recent  and  searching  studies 
of  this  subject  by  independent  scholars  have  been  entirely 
favourable  to  the  historical  character  of  the  gospel  pic- 
ture, and  entirely  unfavourable  to  the  idea  that  Jesus  has 
been  idealised,  or  theologised,  by  the  evangelists,  past 
recognition.  Weiss  asserts  that  the  matter  contained 
in  Q — and  Q  as  he  has  reconstructed  it  contains  a  vastly 
greater  proportion  of  the  gospel  story  than  we  have  ap- 
pealed to — shows  no  trace  whatever  of  being  influenced 
by  later  Christological  ideas;  and  in  this  he  is  substan- 
tially supported  by  Harnack.  Harnack,  indeed,  thinks 
that  Q  represents  Jesus  as  dominated  by  the  sense  of 
His  Messiahship,  from  beginning  to  end  of  the  gospel 
story,  more  strictly  than  the  facts  warrant;  but  the  facts, 
as  he  himself  expiscates  them  from  Q's  report  of  the  words 
of  Jesus,  include  these:  that  He  who  even  in  His  present 
existence  is  more  than  a  prophet  and  greater  than  John, 
He  who  is  the  Son,  will  be  the  future  King  and  Judge. 


THE  TRUTH  OF  THE   GOSPELS         335 

If  this  was  Jesus'  consciousness  of  Himself,  as  we  come 
into  contact  with  it  in  history,  there  is  clearly  room  to 
look  for  wonderful  things  without  discounting  them  as 
idealising.1  It  is  indeed  not  the  formal  testimonies,  in 
which  high  titles  are  assigned  to  Him,  which  impress  us 
most  with  the  sense  of  what  Jesus  is.  In  one  place  or 
another  these  may  be  due  to  misapprehension,  even 
though  it  is  admitted  that  He  sometimes  used  them.  It  is 
the  informal  utterance  of  His  greatness  which  is  so  arresting 
and  inevitable,  and  no  scepticism  can  shake  our  conviction 
that  never  man  spake  as  this  man — about  Himself.  He 
stands  alone,  not  only  in  the  faith  of  His  followers,  but  in 
His  own  apprehension  of  what  He  is  to  God  and  man. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  appreciate  these  conclusions  un- 
less we  try  to  show  their  bearing  on  the  religious  con- 
ditions of  the  present.  No  one  will  deny  that  there  is 
much  confusion  both  within  the  Church  and  outside 
of  it  as  to  what  the  Christian  religion  essentially  is.  Nor 
is  it  only  evangelic  Churches  that  labour  under  such 
perplexities.  As  recent  events  have  shown,  even  the 
Church  of  Rome,  with  all  the  emphasis  it  lays  upon 
the  principles  of  tradition  and  authority,  is  as  sorely 
embarrassed  as  to  the  proper  way  of  dealing  with  its 
modernist  members,  as  any  of  the  Protestant  communions. 
Such  an  inquiry  as  we  have  just  concluded  ought  to 
provide  both  the  Churches  and  seeking  souls  outside  the 
Churches  with  principles  to  steady  themselves  by  in  the 
present  distress. 

1  B.  Weiss,  Die  Quellen  der  synoptischen  Ueberlieferung,  89.  Ein  Ein- 
fluss  spaterer  christologischer  Vorstellungen  auf  die  Stoffe  in  Q  ist  in 
keiner  Weise  nachzuweisen.  So  also,  in  speaking  of  what  he  regards 
as  an  independent  source — which  he  calls  L — and  which  runs  through 
Luke  from  beginning  to  end,  he  says:  Auch  die  Lukasquelle  geht  nirgends 
ueber  die  urchristliche  Auffassung  von  der  Person  Jesu  hinaus  ib.  80; 
and  of  Luke  as  a  whole:  Die  Hauptsache  ist,  dass  von  einer  irgendwie 
hoher  entwickelten  Christologie  im  Lukasevangelium  nicht  die  Rede  sein 
kann.     Cf.  Harnack,  Sprilche  u.  Reden  Jesu,  169. 


336  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

On  the  one  hand,  the  conclusions  which  we  have 
reached  are  entirely  reassuring  to  those  who  stand  in 
the  line  of  historical  Christianity.  Speaking  of  it,  not 
as  a  theological  system,  but  as  a  religious  life,  Chris- 
tianity has  always  given  to  Jesus  a  supreme  place  in  its 
faith.  Christians  have  lived  a  life,  or  have  aimed  at 
least  to  live  a  life,  in  which  all  their  relations  both  to  God 
and  man  were  determined  by  Christ.  They  owed  to 
Him  all  that  made  their  religion  what  it  was:  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  Father,  the  forgiveness  of  their  sins,  the  new 
life  in  the  spirit,  the  assurance  of  immortality.  Their 
faith  in  God  was  in  the  proper  sense  Christian  faith,  be- 
cause it  was  in  the  first  instance  faith  in  Him.  Now 
this  is  the  conception  of  Christianity  which  our  investi- 
gation of  the  New  Testament  has  also  discovered,  and 
it  is  a  conception  which  is  vindicated  when  we  look  to 
Christ  Himself  as  the  oldest  records  disclose  Him.  Those 
who  live  in  the  faith  which  has  just  been  described  live 
in  the  line  of  New  Testament  Christianity,  and  of  the 
mind  of  Christ  about  His  own  place  in  the  relations  of 
men  and  God.  They  have  the  same  religion  as  those 
whose  spiritual  life  is  reflected  in  the  New  Testament. 
Their  attitude  to  Christ  is  the  same,  and  so  is  their  at- 
titude to  God  through  Christ.  This  is  the  point  at  which 
evangelical  Christianity  is  right,  and  at  which  all  its  pro- 
tests against  a  broad  churchism  which  would  give  Christ 
another  or  a  lower  place  than  He  has  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment faith  are  justified.  It  is  the  point  at  which  evangelical 
Christianity  even  in  the  Church  of  Rome  is  justified  in 
refusing  to  negotiate  with  a  modernism  which  by  assum- 
ing that  Christ  cannot  possibly  have  been  anything  but 
what  we  are  makes  the  ascription  to  Him  of  His  supreme 
place  in  faith  impossible.  There  can  be  no  Christianity 
at  all,  in  the  only  sense  in  which  Christianity  can  be  seen 
in  the  New  Testament,  in  the  only  sense  in  which  it  is  a 


THE  RIGHT   OF  BROAD   CHURCHISM    337 

religion  answering  to  the  mind  of  Christ  about  His  own 
place  and  calling,  unless  Christ  is  established  in  the  place 
which  the  faith  of  the  Church  has  always  given  Him. 
He  must  have  His  place  because  He  claims  it  and  be- 
cause it  is  His  due. 

But  there  is  more  than  this  to  say.  What  Christ 
claims  and  what  is  His  due  is  a  place  in  the  faith  of  men 
— in  other  words,  it  is  an  attitude  of  the  soul  to  Himself 
as  He  is  presented  to  us  in  the  gospel.  We  are  bound 
to  Him,  in  that  wonderful  significance  which  He  has 
for  the  life  of  the  soul,  that  unique  and  incommunicable 
power  which  He  has  to  determine  all  our  relations  to 
God  and  man.  To  be  true  Christians,  we  are  thus 
bound  to  Him;  but  we  are  not  bound  to  anything  else. 
But  for  what  He  is  and  for  what  He  has  done,  we  could 
not  be  Christians  at  all:  but  for  our  recognition  of  what 
He  is,  but  for  our  acceptance  of  what  He  has  done,  and 
our  sense  of  infinite  obligation  to  Him  as  we  realise  the 
cost  at  which  He  has  done  it,  we  could  not  tell  what 
Christianity  means.  But  we  are  not  bound  to  any  man's 
or  to  any  church's  rendering  of  what  He  is  or  has  done. 
We  are  not  bound  to  any  Christology,  or  to  any  doctrine 
of  the  work  of  Christ.  No  intellectual  construction  of 
what  Christ's  presence  and  work  in  the  world  mean  is 
to  be  imposed  beforehand  as  a  law  upon  faith,  or  a  con- 
dition of  membership  in  the  Church.  It  is  faith  which 
makes  a  Christian;  and  when  the  Christian  attitude  of 
the  soul  to  Christ  is  found,  it  must  be  free  to  raise  its  own 
problems  and  to  work  out  its  own  solutions.  This  is 
the  point  at  which  'broad'  churchism  is  in  the  right 
against  an  evangelical  Christianity  which  has  not  learned 
to  distinguish  between  its  faith — in  which  it  is  unassailable 
— and  inherited  forms  of  doctrine  which  have  been  un- 
reflectingly identified  with  it.  Natural  as  such  identi- 
fication may  be,  and  painful  as  it  may  be  to  separate 


338  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

in  thought  things  which  have  coalesced  in  strong  and 
sacred  feelings,  there  is  nothing  more  certain  than  that 
the  distinction  must  be  recognised  if  evangelical  Chris- 
tians are  to  maintain  their  intellectual  integrity,  and  preach 
the  gospel  in  a  world  which  is  intellectually  free.  We  are 
bound  to  Christ,  and  would  see  all  men  so  bound;  but 
we  must  leave  it  to  Christ  to  establish  His  ascendency 
over  men  in  His  own  way — by  the  power  of  what  He  is 
and  of  what  He  has  done — and  not  seek  to  secure  it  before- 
hand by  the  imposition  of  chains  of  our  forging. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  urgent  needs  of  the  Church  at 
the  present  moment  to  have  both  these  truths  recognised 
in  their  full  extent.  There  can  be  no  Christianity  to 
maintain  if  the  evangelical  truth  is  not  asserted  that 
Christ  must  have  in  the  faith  of  men  no  less  or  lower 
place  than  He  has  had  from  the  beginning,  or  than  He 
Himself,  as  we  have  seen,  deliberately  assumed;  but 
there  can  be  no  hope  of  appealing  to  the  world  in  which 
we  live  to  give  Christ  such  a  place  in  its  faith  if  we  iden- 
tiiy  doing  so  with  the  acceptance  beforehand  of  the  in- 
herited theology  or  Christology  of  the  Church.  This 
is  not  said  with  any  indifference  to  theology  or  Chris- 
tology, with  any  feeling  that  Christ  and  His  place  in 
the  world,  and  especially  in  the  relations  of  God  and 
man,  are  not  worth  thinking  about.  On  the  contrary, 
there  is  nothing  which  is  so  much  worth  thinking  about, 
nor  so  certain  to  stimulate  thought  if  only  thought  is  left 
free.  Nor  is  it  said  on  the  other  hand  with  any  indiffer- 
ence to  the  place  of  Christ:  that  is  assumed  to  be  in- 
disputable from  the  outset.  The  problem  is  to  find  a 
way  of  securing  the  two  things:  unreserved  recognition 
/  of  the  place  which  Christ  has  always  held  in  evangelical 
faith,  and  entire  intellectual  freedom  in  thinking  out 
what  this  implies.  There  is  no  necessary  inconsistency 
in  the  combination;    it  has  been  realised  in  every  orig- 


ZINZENDORF  AND   WESLEY  339 

inal  Christian  thinker,  and  the  true  teachers  of  the  Church 
are  one  prolonged  illustration  of  it.  Not  only  great 
theologians,  but  great  evangelists  like  Zinzendorf  and 
Wesley  have  explicitly  recognised  it.  To  refer  to  the 
former.  He  was,  says  his  biographer,  indifferent  to 
many  things  to  which  the  theologians  of  his  time  at- 
tached supreme  importance;  for  he  believed  that  all 
who  love  the  Saviour  meet  in  a  spiritual  unity  raised 
infinitely  above  the  barriers  erected  between  the  different 
Churches  by  differences  of  rite  and  tradition;  and  even 
by  their  errors.  'Although,'  he  wrote,  'I  am  and  mean 
to  remain  a  member  of  the  evangelical  (i.e.  the  Lutheran) 
Church,  nevertheless  I  do  not  bind  Christ  and  His  truth 
to  any  sect;  whoever  believes  that  he  is  saved  by  the 
grace  of  the  Lord  Jesus  by  living  faith,  that  is  to  say, 
whoever  seeks  and  finds  in  Christ  wisdom,  righteousness, 
sanctification  and  redemption,  is  my  brother;  and  for 
what  remains,  I  regard  it  as  an  unprofitable  task,  or  as 
rather  injurious  than  profitable,  to  examine  what  his 
opinions  are,  or  what  his  exegesis.  In  this  sense,'  he 
goes  on,  'I  admit  that  it  makes  no  difference  to  me  that 
a  man  is  heterodox— but  in  this  sense  only.' l  Similar 
passages  might  be  multiplied  from  Wesley.  In  his 
Journal,  under  date  May  18,  1788,  he  says:  'I  sub- 
joined (to  his  sermon  on  "Now  abideth  faith,  hope, 
love;  these  three")  a  short  account  of  Methodism,  par- 
ticularly insisting  on  the  circumstances — There  is  no 
other  religious  society  under  heaven  which  requires 
nothing  of  men  in  order  to  their  admission  into  it  but  a 
desire  to  save  their  souls.  Look  all  around  you,  you 
cannot  be  admitted  into  the  Church  {i.e.  the  Church  of 
England),  or  society  of  the  Presbyterians,  Anabaptists, 
Quakers,  or  any  others,  unless  you  hold  the  same  opin- 

1  F.  Bovet,  Le  Comte  de  Zinzendorf,  146.     The  passage  quoted  is  from 
a  letter  of  Zinzendorf,  dated  June  20,  1729. 


34o  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

ions  with  them,  and  adhere  to  the  same  mode  of  worship. 
The  Methodists  alone  do  not  insist  on  your  holding 
this  or  that  opinion;  but  they  think  and  let  think.'  No 
one  will  suspect  Wesley  of  indifference  to  the  place  which 
Christ  must  have  in  Christian  faith,  but  he  was  as  clear  as 
Zinzendorf  that  this  place  was  one  thing,  and  that  the 
theological  explanations  of  it  or  deductions  from  it  were 
another.  It  is  this  distinction  between  soundness  in 
faith — a  genuinely  Christian  attitude  of  the  soul  to  Christ, 
in  virtue  of  which  Christ  determines  the  spiritual  life 
throughout — and  soundness  in  doctrine — the  acceptance 
of  some  established  intellectual  construction  of  faith,  on 
which  emphasis  needs  to  be  laid.  Soundness  in  faith  is 
that  on  which  Christianity  and  the  Church  depend  for 
their  very  being;  but  the  construction  of  Christian  doc- 
trine is  one  of  the  tasks  at  which  Christian  intelligence 
must  freely  labour,  respecting,  no  doubt,  but  never  bound 
by,  the  efforts  or  attainments  of  the  past. 

This,  it  may  be  said,  is  generally  admitted,  and  in 
one  sense  this  is  true.  It  is  admitted  by  individuals. 
The  vast  majority  of  the  members  of  the  evangelical 
churches  occupy  practically  the  position  described.  They 
are  loyal  to  Christ:  their  attitude  to  Him  is  essentially 
the  New  Testament  attitude;  they  acknowledge  that  in 
their  spiritual  life  it  is  His  to  determine  everything,  and 
that  they  are  infinitely  and  for  ever  His  debtors.  But 
to  a  large  extent,  and  to  an  extent  which  increases  as  the 
mind  realises  its  independence  in  other  regions,  and 
cherishes  ideals  of  what  science  and  freedom  mean,  they 
have  lost  interest  in  the  traditional  theology.  It  is  not 
that  they  actively  disapprove  of  it  or  dissent  from  it,  but 
they  do  not  think  of  it.  It  is  not  their  own,  and  they  have 
a  dim  or  a  clear  conviction  that  anything  of  this  kind,  if 
it  is  to  have  interest  or  value  for  them,  must  be  their  own. 
It  must  be  their  own  faith  which  inspires  it,  the  action  of 


FAITH  AND   DOCTRINE  341 

their  own  minds  which  is  embodied  in  it.  It  cannot  be 
simply  lifted,  as  an  inheritance,  or  submitted  to,  as  a  law; 
it  must  be  the  free  and  spontaneous  product  of  an  intelli- 
gence energised  by  faith  in  Christ.  Individual  Christians 
understand  this,  and  that  is  why  they  sometimes  seem 
so  indifferent  to  doctrine.  Preachers  understand  it,  and 
try  to  present  to  their  hearers  not  doctrines  about  Christ, 
but  Christ  Himself — not  doctrines  about  Christ,  for 
doctrine  always  challenges  scepticism,  and  scepticism 
the  more  searching  in  proportion  as  its  claim  to  authority 
is  high,  but  Christ  Himself,  the  sight  of  whom  is  the 
supreme  appeal  and  motive  to  faith.  But  though  indi- 
vidual Christians,  and  not  only  those  who  listen  to  the 
gospel  but  those  who  preach  it,  are  conscious  of  this 
distinction  and  accept  its  consequences,  the  Churches 
can  hardly  be  said  to  have  done  so.  They  are  Christian 
organisations,  yet  they  seem  to  be  based  on  doctrinal 
statements  which  most  of  their  members  have  realised 
are  not  the  actual  or  the  proper  basis  of  Christian  life; 
and  they  not  only  find  it  difficult  to  conceive  any  other 
basis,  but  seem  to  suspect  those  who  speak  of  another 
of  striking  at  the  very  heart  of  the  faith.  This  want  of 
accord  between  the  intellectual  attitude  of  the  Churches 
acting  collectively,  and  that  of  their  individual  members, 
is  the  cause  not  only  of  much  discomfort  and  misunder- 
standing within,  but  of  much  scandal  and  reproach 
without.  It  seriously  discredits  the  Church  in  the  eyes 
of  the  world  to  which  it  wishes  to  appeal,  and  it  is  ur- 
gent to  ask  whether  there  is  any  remedy  for  it. 

The  responsibilities  of  a  society,  it  must  be  frankly 
admitted,  are  other  than  those  of  its  individual  members. 
It  is  inevitably  more  conservative  than  they;  it  has  to 
guard  in  some  sense  what  the  labours  of  the  past  have 
won,  and  not  allow  the  historical  inheritance  to  be  re- 
pudiated or  cast  away  by  the  juvenile  petulance  of  those 


342  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

who  know  neither  what  it  means  nor  what  it  has  cost. 
Christian  thought  has  been  at  work  for  centuries  on  the 
object  and  the  experiences  of  Christian  faith,  and  it 
would  be  more  than  strange  if  all  its  toil  had  been  in 
vain.  There  is  a  just  and  proper  jealousy  of  an  attitude 
to  the  past  which  virtually  denies  to  it  the  presence  and 
the  providence  of  God,  and  assumes  that  where  it  is 
concerned  we  have  everything  to  teach  and  nothing  to 
learn.  This  is  not  at  all  the  attitude  which  we  advocate 
when  we  urge  that  the  intelligence  of  the  Church  in  the 
present  must  be  allowed  free  play.  It  is  the  denial  of 
this  freedom  which  more  than  anything  else  makes  men 
unjust  to  the  past.  Nothing  creates  a  stronger  prejudice 
against  a  creed,  especially  if  it  is  of  any  high  degree  of 
elaboration,  than  the  necessity  of  signing  it  as  a  con- 
dition of  membership  or  of  ministry  in  the  Church.  The 
main  fact  about  it  in  those  circumstances — that  which 
weighs  most  upon  the  mind — is  that  it  is  imposed  as  a 
law  upon  faith;  and  the  feelings  which  this  infallibly 
engenders  are  those  of  resentment  and  suspicion.  It  is 
not  paradoxical,  but  the  simple  truth,  to  say  that  the 
influence  of  documents  like  the  Westminster  Confession, 
for  example,  or  even  the  Thirty-Nine  Articles,  in  the 
Churches  which  require  their  office-bearers  to  sign  them, 
would  not  only  be  more  legitimate  but  indefinitely  greater 
if  subscription  were  abolished.  Men  would  then  apply 
themselves  freely  to  these  historical  expositions  of  Chris- 
tianity with  minds  willing  to  be  helped,  not  in  a  sus- 
picious temper,  or  in  the  attitude  of  self-defence;  they 
would  value  them  more  highly  and  learn  far  more  from 
them;  they  would  not  be  tempted  to  strain  them  into 
meaning  what  they  were  not  intended  to  mean,  so  as  to 
make  subscription  less  of  a  burden  to  conscience.  To  say 
this  is  not  to  accuse  the  mind  of  childishness;  it  is  only 
to  recognise  facts  which  every  day's  experience  confirms. 


FAITH  AND   CHRISTIAN  UNITY         343 

In  spite,  however,  of  all  their  responsibilities  and  ob- 
ligations to  the  past— in  spite  of  the  duty  incumbent 
on  them  to  conserve  its  intellectual  as  well  as  its  moral 
attainments — the  pressure  put  upon  the  Churches,  both 
from  without  and  from  within,  to  recognise  the  claims 
of  intellectual  liberty,  is  rapidly  becoming  irresistible. 
Christian  people,  who  are  consciously  at  one  in  their 
attitude  to  Christ  and  in  their  sense  of  obligation  to 
Him,  see  that  they  are  kept  in  different  communions, 
and  incapacitated  from  co-operation  in  work  and  wor- 
ship, because  they  have  inherited  different  theological 
traditions  to  which  they  are  assumed  to  be  bound.  With- 
out entering  into  any  discussion  of  what  these  theolog- 
ical traditions — call  them  creeds,  confessions,  testimonies, 
or  whatever  else — are  worth,  they  feel  in  their  souls 
that  they  are  not  bound  to  them,  and  ought  not  to  be, 
with  the  same  kind  of  bond  which  secures  their  allegiance 
to  Christ.  For  the  sake  of  getting  nearer  to  those  who 
share  this  allegiance,  and  co-operating  with  them  in  the 
service  of  the  Lord  who  holds  their  hearts,  they  contem- 
plate with  more  than  equanimity  the  slackening  or  dis- 
solution of  the  bonds  which  attach  them  to  the  theology, 
or,  if  we  prefer  to  call  it  so,  the  Christian  thought  of  the 
past.  They  will  think  for  themselves  as  they  can  or 
must,  but  the  primary  necessity,  if  not  the  one  thing  need- 
ful, is  the  Christian  attitude  of  the  soul  to  Christ,  and 
union  with  all  who  make  that  attitude  their  own.  In- 
ternal pressure  of  this  kind  is  reinforced  from  without. 
In  every  country  in  Christendom  the  nation  has  outgrown 
the  Church,  or  has  to  a  large  extent  passed  from  beneath  its 
influence.  Even  of  those  who  retain  connexion  with 
it,  frequenting  its  worship  and  formally  supporting  it 
before  the  world,  vast  numbers  are  mentally  in  that 
strained  relation  to  it  which  has  just  been  described.  It 
is  not   necessary  to  diagnose   too  narrowly  the   causes 


344  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

which  have  led  to  the  estrangement  from  the  Church  of 
such  masses  of  those  who  once  found  in  it  a  spiritual 
home,  and  still  less  to  suppose  that  they  all  lie  in  the 
region  with  which  we  are  dealing;  but  it  is  certain  that 
readjustments  must  be  made  here  before  those  who  have 
been  alienated  can  be  won  again.  It  is  certain  also 
that  before  Christians  can  combine  to  face  with  effect 
the  problems  presented  by  society  to  the  spirit  of  Christ 
they  must  overcome  somehow  the  forces  which  perpetu- 
ate division  among  themselves.  The  important  question 
is  whether  they  can  find  the  true  principle  of  union.  If 
the  conclusions  which  we  have  reached  are  sound,  it  must 
be  a  principle  which  will  secure  the  two  ends  we  have  now 
before  us — that  is,  which  will  bind  men  to  the  Christian 
attitude  to  Christ,  but  which  will  leave  them,  thus  bound, 
free  to  assume  and  discharge  their  intellectual  and  moral 
responsibilities  with  a  conscience  acknowledging  no  au- 
thority but  that  of  the  God  in  whom  they  believe  through 
Him. 

It  is  very  natural  that  the  first  steps  toward  the  re- 
cognition of  such  a  principle  should  be  hesitating  and 
uncertain.  Churches  which  have  inherited  complex  and 
elaborate  creeds — creeds  which,  though  they  may  be 
called  confessions  of  faith,  are  not  really  confessions  of 
faith,  but  more  or  less  complete  systems  of  theology — 
are  apt  to  think  that  it  is  in  the  complexity  and  elabora- 
tion of  their  confessions  that  the  difficulty  lies.  Their 
first  thought  is  that  what  we  need  for  union  among  Chris- 
tians is  the  reduction  or  simplification  of  our  elaborate 
creeds.  Why,  for  example,  it  is  asked,  should  we  cling 
to  the  Westminster  Confession,  a  document  contain- 
ing hundreds  of  sharply-defined  propositions,  about 
many  of  which  there  is  no  prospect  of  Christians  ever 
agreeing?  Why  should  we  not  recognise  that  it  is  hope- 
less to  expect  union  on  this  basis,  and  go  back  to  a  sub- 


SIMPLIFICATION   OF  CREEDS  345 

lime  and  simple  formula  like  the  creed  of  Nicaea  ?  Would 
not  all  Christians  gather  round  that?  This  has  not  only 
been  ventilated  as  a  possibility,  but  has  been  definitely 
proposed  as  the  doctrinal  basis  of  union  between  the  Pres- 
byterians and  Episcopalians  of  Australia. 

Plausible  as  this  may  sound,  it  is  plausible  only  to 
those  who  have  never  appreciated  the  nature  of  the  dif- 
ficulty which  has  to  be  dealt  with.  What  we  want  as 
a  basis  of  union  is  not  something  simpler,  of  the  same 
kind  as  the  creeds  and  confessions  in  our  hands;  it  is 
something  of  a  radically  different  kind.  To  simplify 
merely  by  going  back  from  the  seventeenth  century  to 
the  fourth  is  certainly  an  easy  matter,  but  what  a  con- 
temptuous censure  it  passes  on  the  Christian  thought  of 
the  centuries  between.  When  a  man  speaks  of  giving  up 
the  Westminster  Confession  for  the  Nicene  Creed,  one 
can  only  think  that  he  has  no  true  appreciation  of  either. 
The  Westminster  Confession  contains  everything  that 
is  in  the  Nicene  Creed,  but  the  writer  has  no  hesitation  in 
saying  that  this  is  the  least  valuable  part  of  what  it  con- 
tains, and  that  which  has  least  prospect  of  permanence. 
The  valuable  parts  of  the  Confession,  those  which  still 
appeal  to  the  Christian  conscience  and  awaken  a  response 
in  it,  are  the  new  parts — those  which  represent  the  gains 
of  the  Reformation  revival  and  the  insight  into  Christian 
truth  acquired  there;  they  are  the  parts  which  treat  of  the 
work  of  Christ  and  its  consequences — of  justification, 
adoption,  and  sanctification ;  of  saving  faith  and  repentance 
unto  life;  of  Christian  liberty  and  liberty  of  conscience; 
of  Holy  Scripture,  or  the  Word  of  God,  as  the  supreme 
means  of  grace.  To  simplify  the  creed  by  omitting  every- 
thing which  can  be  verified  in  experience,  and  then  to 
expect  men  to  unite  in  the  purely  metaphysical  proposition 
— for  whatever  religious  interest  it  is  supposed  to  guard, 
it  is  a  purely  metaphysical  proposition — that  Christ  is  con- 


346  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

substantial  with  the  Father,  is  only  to  show  that  one  has 
not  diagnosed  the  situation  at  all.  Very  few  people  can 
tell  what  Athanasius  and  the  Nicene  bishops  meant  by 
this  term.  No  one  knows  whether  all  who  use  it  now  use 
it  in  precisely  the  same  sense;  or  rather,  it  is  as  certain 
as  anything  can  be  that  they  do  not.  Every  one  feels 
that  it  is  on  something  else  than  the  understanding  of 
such  metaphysical  propositions  that  the  life  and  union  of 
Christians  depend;  and  it  is  this  something  else,  and 
not  what  any  one  regards  as  its  metaphysical  basis  or 
presupposition,  which  ought  to  find  expression  in  the 
common  Christian  confession  of  faith.  It  is  their  attitude 
to  Christ  which  Christians  have  to  declare,  and  Christ 
can  only  be  described  in  their  confession  in  the  character 
which  justifies  that  attitude.  He  can  only  be  described 
in  the  simple  language  of  religion.  What  for  theology  or 
metaphysics  is  involved  in  this  is  a  proper  subject  for 
theological  or  metaphysical  study;  but  it  ought  not  to  have 
a  place,  and  if  Christians  are  ever  to  unite  it  will  not  have 
a  place,  in  the  confession  of  faith  in  which  they  declare 
the  attitude  of  their  souls  to  Him. 

But,  it  may  be  said,  is  it  possible  to  separate  in  this 
way  the  Christian  attitude  to  Christ  from  definite  beliefs 
and  convictions  about  Him?  Did  not  He  Himself  raise 
the  question  of  Christology  when  He  said  to  His  dis- 
ciples, 'Whom  say  ye  that  I  am?'  When  we  ask  men 
to  believe  in  Him,  must  we  not  be  able  to  tell  them  things 
about  Him  which  demand  or  justify  the  faith  for  which 
we  appeal?  When  they  ask  who  then  the  Person  is  for 
whom  so  incomparable  a  place  is  claimed,  must  we  not 
be  able  to  tell  them  in  direct  and  express  terms?  And 
in  particular,  it  may  be  said,  how  is  the  work  of 
Christian  education  to  be  carried  on?  How  are 
the  immature  members  of  a  Christian  community  to 
be   reared    in    Christian    intelligence    if     there    is    not 


FAITH  AND  CREED  347 

some  doctrinal  system  on  the  basis  of  which  they  can 
be  catechised  ? 

All  these  are  fair  questions,  and  no  one  could  be  less 
disposed  than  the  writer  to  dispute  their  fairness.  What 
they  rest  upon,  in  the  last  resort,  is  the  feeling  that  the 
Christian  attitude  to  Christ,  and  a  certain  type  of  con- 
victions about  Christ,  are  not  unrelated  to  each  other. 
There  can  be  no  such  thing  as  a  final  schism  in  human 
nature,  no  possibility  of  permanently  opposing  faith  and 
knowledge,  or  of  permanently  playing  off  the  one  against 
the  other.  The  Christian  attitude  to  Christ,  and  the 
Christian  experiences  into  which  men  are  initiated  by  it, 
must,  in  proportion  as  they  are  truly  apprehended  in  the 
mind,  lead  to  a  body  of  Christian  convictions,  or  a  system 
of  Christian  doctrine,  in  which  believing  men  will  find 
themselves  at  one.  This  is  not  questioned  in  the  least. 
What  is  at  issue  is  rather  a  question  of  order  than  of  an- 
tagonism: our  concern  is  to  see  that  we  lay  at  the  founda- 
tion only  what  is  fundamental,  and  that  we  do  not  present 
to  men  as  the  indispensable  presupposition  of  faith  what 
is  one  of  faith's  last  and  most  difficult  achievements. 
When  we  preach,  we  must  certainly  be  able  to  tell  men 
things  about  Christ  which  justify  the  Christian  attitude 
to  Him.  But  these  faith-producing  things  are  not  dog- 
matic definitions  of  His  person:  they  are  not  doctrinal 
propositions,  such  as  those  of  the  Nicene  Creed;  nor  are 
they  less  formal  expressions  of  essentially  the  same  charac- 
ter. They  are  such  things  as  we  have  been  in  contact 
with  all  through  our  study  of  the  gospels:  they  are  the 
life,  the  mind,  the  death,  the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  If  the 
exhibition  of  these  does  not  evoke  the  Christian  attitude 
of  the  soul  to  Him,  the  soundest  metaphysical  doctrine  of 
His  person  is  worthless.  But  if  the  Christian  attitude 
is  evoked  by  the  revelation  of  Jesus  in  the  gospel,  we  have 
found  that  in  which  all  Christians  can  unite,  and  the 


// 


348  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

theological  doctrine  of  His  person  may  be  trusted  sooner 
or  later  to  come  to  its  rights.  But  it  must  not  be  taken 
out  of  its  proper  place  and  order,  nor  can  we  expect  it  to 
yield  us  what  can  only  be  found  in  the  sphere  of  faith.  The 
questions  raised  by  the  Christian  attitude  to  Jesus,  and 
the  Christian's  sense  of  debt  to  Him,  may  have  to  be 
asked  over  and  over,  taking  always  a  wider  range,  pene- 
trating always  more  deeply  into  the  wonder  of  what  He 
is  and  does;  and  with  the  widening  and  deepening  of  the 
questions  the  answers  too  must  vary  in  form.  That 
is  why  we  cannot  look  to  these  answers,  however  profound 
or  true  they  may  be,  to  furnish  the  basis  of  union  among 
Christians.  They  are  always  subject  to  revision,  not 
because  He  changes — He  is  the  same  yesterday  and  to-day 
and  for  ever — but  because  men  change  in  their  apprehen- 
sion of  Him.  And  in  such  changes,  even  though  they 
may  sometimes  be  changed  to  an  inferior  or  less  adequate 
conception  of  Him,  we  must  bear  with  each  other  so  long 
as  the  attitude  of  Christian  faith  in  Him  is  maintained. 

If  we  look  to  the  Church  of  the  New  Testament  age, 
we  shall  find  that  this  is  essentially  the  situation  in  which 
it  confronts  us.  As  has  been  demonstrated  above,  there 
is  one  religion  exhibited  in  every  part  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment; from  beginning  to  end,  in  every  writer  represented 
in  it,  there  is  the  same  attitude  of  the  soul  to  Christ.  In 
other  words,  there  is  one  faith.  But  though  there  is  one 
faith,  there  is  not  one  Christology.  All  the  New  Testa- 
ment writers,  it  may  no  doubt  be  said,  have  a  Christology 
of  some  kind.  Faith  always  acts  as  an  intellectual  stim- 
ulus, and  it  never  did  so  more  irresistibly  than  in  the  first 
generation.  When  Christ  constrained  men  to  assume 
what  we  have  called  the  Christian  attitude  to  Himself,  He 
constrained  them  at  the  same  time  to  ask  who  the  Person 
was  to  whom  such  an  attitude  was  due.  He  constrained 
them  to  think  what  His  relations  must  be  to  God  and 


FAITH  AND   CHRISTOLOGY  349 

man,  and  even  to  the  universe  at  large,  to  justify  the  at- 
titude He  assumed  to  them.  But  though  these  questions 
stirred  more  or  less  powerfully,  as  they  must  always  do, 
the  intelligence  of  Christians,  it  is  impossible  for  any 
scientific  student  of  the  New  Testament  to  say  that  all  the 
early  believers,  or  even  all  who  were  regarded  in  the 
Church  as  divinely  empowered  witnesses  to  the  gospel, 
answered  them  in  precisely  the  same  way.  To  take 
only  one  example,  but  that  the  most  conspicuous:  Paul's  \A\ 
attitude  to  Christ  is  exactly  that  of  other  New  Testament  *  , 
writers,  but  his  Christology  is  his  own.  It  is  not  identical 
with  that  of  Peter  or  John,  or,  so  far  as  we  can  discover 
it,  with  that  of  Matthew  or  Luke;  just  as  little  is  it  iden- 
tical with  that  of  the  Nicene  Creed.  It  does  not  follow 
from  this  that  it  is  of  no  value,  or  of  no  authority.  The 
great  thoughts  about  Christ  inspired  by  Christian  faith  in 
Him,  as  the  New  Testament  illustrates  it — thoughts  about 
His  relations  to  God,  to  men,  and  to  the  universe — al- 
ways tend  to  reproduce  themselves  in  minds  which  share 
that  faith;  and  it  must  be  a  singularly  powerful  or  soli- 
tary mind  which  in  its  Christian  thoughts  about  Christ 
could  own  no  debt  to  Paul.  This  is  the  guarantee  we 
have,  in  a  world  in  which  the  mind  is  once  for  all  free, 
that  the  truth  in  Paul's  thoughts  about  Christ^wTlTriever  \ 
be  lost.  But  though  it  does  not  follow  from  what  has 
been  said  that  Paul's  Christology  is  of  no  value,  or  has 
no  authority  for  us,  it  does  follow  that  neither  his  nor  any 
other  Christology  can  be  the  basis  of  union  among  Chris- 
tians of  which  the  Churches  are  in  quest.  It  was  not 
Christology  in  any  sense  in  which  Christians  were  one 
from  the  beginning,  and  the  Formula  Concordiae  which 
the  perplexed  conscience  of  multitudes  in  all  the  Churches 
is  at  present  seeking,  cannot  be  a  theological  document. 
It  must,  we  repeat,  be  a  declaration  which  will  bind  men 
to  Christ  as  believers  have  been  bound  from  the  beginning, 


^b 


350  JESUS  AND  THE  GOSPEL 

but  which  will  also  leave  them  in  possession  of  the  birth- 
right of  New  Testament  Christians— the  right  and  the 
power  of  applying  their  own  minds,  with  conscientious 
freedom,  to  search  out  the  truth  of  what  Jesus  is  and  does, 
and  to  read  all  things  in  the  light  of  it— the  world  and  God, 
nature  and  history,  the  present  and  the  future  of  man. 

Reserving,  then,  this  right  and  power,  it  only  remains 
to   ask  whether  we  can  put  the  religious  truth   about 
Jesus,   the  significance  which  He  has  for  the  faith  of 
Christians,  into  words  which  all  who  adopt  the  Christian 
attitude  to  Him  would  recognise  as  the  expression  of 
their  faith.     Such  words  would  not  be  doctrinal  or  dog- 
matic, in  the  sense  of  the  Nicene  Creed,  or  of  the  Augs- 
burg or  the  Westminster  Confession;    they  would  not 
be  an  utterance  the  same  in  kind,  but  simpler  in  form,  and 
less  ambitious  in  aim;   they  would  be  the  immediate  ut- 
terance of  the  Christian  sense  of  what  faith  has  in  Christ, 
not  the  speculative  or  reflective  statement— as  these  other 
documents  all  are  in  varying  degrees— of  metaphysical 
truths  concerning  Christ  which  must  be  admitted  if  we 
would  justify  our  faith.     The  truth  they  embody  would 
not  be  itself  a  creed,  in  the  sense  of  a  scientific  or  theo- 
logically defined  statement;  it  would  not  be  the  substitute 
for  a  creed;  it  would  be  the  inspiration  and  the  standard 
of  all  Christian  thinking.     Looking  back  to  the  investi- 
gations which  we  have  just  completed,  and  recalling  the 
significance  which  Jesus  had  in  His  own  mind,  and  has 
always  had  in  the  minds  of  Christians,  it  is  perhaps  not 
f  too  bold  to  suggest  that  the  symbol  of  the  Church's  unity 
might  be  expressed  thus:  I  believe  in  God  through  Jesus 
Christ  His  only  Son,  our  Lord  and  Saviour. 

A  few  words  will  explain  everything  in  this  which 
requires  explanation.  The  ultimate  object  of  faith  is 
always  God,  but  Christian  faith  in  God  is  faith  which  is 
determined  by  Christ,  and  which  would  not  in  any  re- 


A  UNITING  CONFESSION  351 

spect  be  what  it  is  but  for  Him.    Hence  in  the  most  ele- 
mentary  Christian   confession,    faith   in    God    must   be 
so  described  as  to  bring  out  this  specific  character.     It 
must  be  defined  as  faith  in  God  through  Christ.     But 
how  is  the  Person  to  be  described  who  is  the  mediator 
of   this  characteristically   Christian   faith?    If  we  keep 
vividly  before  us  that  estimate  of  Him  which  pervades 
the  New  Testament  writings,   and  which,   as  we  have 
seen,  can  be  vindicated  by  appeal  to  His  own  conscious- 
ness of  Himself,  we  shall  probably  agree  that  this  descrip- 
tion must  cover  or  include  two  things :  first,  that  the  Person 
concerned  is  to  God  what  no  other  can  be;   and  second, 
that  He  is  also  what  no  other  can  be  to  man.     The  first 
of  these  is  secured  when  He  is  described  as  the  only  Son 
of  God.     We  need  not  hesitate  to  admit  that  when  we 
speak  of  God  the  only  terms  we  can  use  are  symbolic 
or  analogical.     If  the  analogies  suggested  are  real,  the 
terms  are  true  and  valuable.     'Son  of  God'  in  ancient 
times  was  used  with  great  latitude  of  meaning,  both  by 
Jews  and  Gentiles;  but  what  it  conveys  here  is  that  Jesus' 
consciousness  of  God  was  truly  filial.     God  was  to  Him 
Father,  and  He  was  to  God  Son.     When  we  describe 
Him  as  the  only  Son  of  God,  what  is  signified  is  that  in 
that  filial  consciousness  He  stands  alone  in  the  world.     He 
is  not,  as  He  conceives  Himself  and  as  Christian  faith  re- 
cognises Him,  a  son  of  God,  but  the  Son.     He  is  the  Son 
in  the  same  unqualified  sense  in  which  God  is  the  Father, 
and  when  believers  are  initiated  into  the  filial  relation  to 
God,  it  is  in  and  through  Him.    No  metaphysical  solu- 
tion or  explanation  is  offered  of  the  fact  that  Christ  is 
to  God  what  no  other  is  or  can  be;  the  fact  is  simply  de- 
clared— and  if  the  Christianity  of  the  New  Testament 
and  of  the  consciousness  of  Jesus  is  to  survive  it  must  be 
declared — when  he  is  called  God's  only  Son.     The  term 
only  is  the  simplest,  but  an  entirely  adequate,  translation 


352  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

of  the  unicus  and  fiovoye^  of  the  Latin  and  Greek  creeds. 
The  second  requisite  in  the  description  of  Christ— that 
He  shall  be  presented  as  being  to  men  what  no  other  is  or 
can  be — is  secured  when  He  is  further  designated  our 
Lord  and  Saviour.  The  first  term  expresses  the  unique 
allegiance  and  loyalty  which  all  Christians  acknowledge 
to  Christ;  the  second,  the  unique  debt  which  they  owe 
Him.  Taking  both  together,  and  in  combination  with 
the  description  of  Jesus  as  the  only  Son  of  God,  it  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  they  safeguard  everything  which  is 
vital  to  New  Testament  Christianity,  that  they  include 
everything  which  ought  to  have  a  place  in  a  fundamental 
confession  of  faith,  and  that  they  are  the  only  basis  of 
union  broad  enough  and  solid  enough  for  all  Christians 
to  meet  upon. 

The  objections  which  will  immediately  arise  here  in 
many  minds  are  mainly  due  to  prepossessions  or  assump- 
tions which  reflection  will  lead  us  to  discount.  It  may 
be  worth  while  to  refer  to  some  of  the  chief. 

It  will  certainly  be  urged,  to  begin  with,  that  no  Chris- 
tian confession  of  faith  can  omit  mention  of  the  Holy 
Spirit.  Believers  have  been  baptized  from  the  earliest 
days  in  the  name  of  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy 
Spirit.  Especially,  it  may  be  said,  if  the  union  of  Chris- 
tians is  in  view,  must  we  remember  that  it  is  dependent 
upon  the  Spirit;  there  is  one  Body  only  because  there  is 
one  Spirit;  and  it  is  the  unity  of  the  Spirit  which  the  New 
Testament  exhorts  us  to  maintain.  The  facts  alleged 
here  are  not  disputed,  and  nothing  can  be  further  from 
the  writer's  mind  than  to  minimise  their  importance. 
Once  again  it  is  a  question  not  of  antagonism,  but  of  order. 
It  is  surely  much  in  favour  of  the  type  of  confession  ad- 
vocated above  that  the  New  Testament  nowhere  speaks 
of  faith  in  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  apostles  preach  Christ, 
and  call  on  men  to  believe  on  Him;   those  who  respond 


THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  353 

to  the  call  confess  Christ  in  the  character  in  which  He  is 
preached,  the  only  Son  of  God,  the  Lord  and  Saviour; 
they  believe  in  Him,  and  in  God  through  Him;  but  familiar 
as  it  is  to  us  through  the  accepted  creeds  of  the  Church, 
such  an  expression  as  'I  believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost'  is  - 
entirely  foreign  to  the  New  Testament.  What  the  apostles 
asked  was  not,  Do  you  believe  in  the  Holy  Spirit?  but, 
Did  you  receive  the  Holy  Spirit  when  you  believed— 
believed,  that  is,  in  Jesus?  (Acts  19 2).  It  is  better,  , 
in  thinking  of  what  is  essential  to  a  Christian  confession, 
to  keep  to  New  Testament  lines.  The  Spirit  will  have 
its  proper  place  in  the  interpretation  of  Christian  ex- 
perience; but  to  introduce  the  bare  term  into  the  primary 
confession,  and  to  present  the  Spirit  as  an  object  of  faith 
co-ordinate  with  Christ,  is  both  to  desert  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  to  beguile  ourselves  with  an  illusion  of  knowledge 
about  the  divine  nature  which  has  no  Christian  value. 
As  long  as  the  experiences  which  come  to  men  by  believ- 
ing in  God  through  Christ  are  what  they  have  been,  the 
explanation  of  them  from  the  divine  side,  as  wrought  by 
the  Spirit  of  God,  will  find  its  due;  but  apart  from  this 
explanation,  which  surely  has  no  proper  place  in  the  creed, 
there  is  no  call  to  allude  to  the  Spirit. 

It  is  no  unimportant  confirmation  of  this  view  that 
the  historical  creeds  of  Christendom  all  betray  a  certain 
degree  of  embarrassment  in  their  treatment  of  the  article 
on  the  Spirit  which  they  nevertheless  agree  to  introduce. 
The  most  ancient,  the  'Apostles"  Creed,  has  definite 
affirmations  to  make  about  the  Father  and  the  Son,  but 
when  it  comes  to  the  Spirit  it  has  not  a  word  to  add.  The 
Nicene  Creed  had  originally  the  same  form  at  this  point: 
it  ended  with  the  words,  'and  in  the  Holy  Ghost.'  The 
Constantinople  text,  which  dates  from  381,  ventures  on 
expansion :  '  (I  believe)  in  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  Lord  and 
Giver  of  Life;  who  proceedeth  from  the  Father  [and 
23 


354  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

the  Son];  who  with  the  Father  and  the  Son  together  is 
worshipped  and  glorified;  who  spake  by  the  Prophets.' 
The  haphazard  and  incongruous  character  of  these  ad- 
ditions needs  no  comment.  In  reality,  the  proper  ex- 
pansion of  the  article  on  the  Spirit — that  in  which  the 
meaning  of  'the  Spirit'  is  discovered — is  to  be  found  in 
the  latter  clauses  of  the  Apostles'  Creed :  it  is  in  the  exist- 
ence of  the  Church  as  the  fellowship  of  believers,  in  the 
consciousness  of  forgiveness  and  in  the  assurance  of  im- 
mortality, that  the  Spirit  is  real,  an  object  of  knowledge 
and  experience  to  believers:  apart  from  these  experiences, 
we  could  not  even  know  there  was  any  such  thing.  Even 
one  who  has  every  disposition  to  make  the  most  of  tra- 
ditional Christian  thinking,  and  who  heartily  agrees  that 
no  one  knows  all  that  a  Christian  means  by  'God'  unless 
he  includes  in  the  term  all  that  is  meant  by  'Father,  Son, 
and  Holy  Spirit,'  may  on  grounds  like  these  be  con- 
vinced that  every  Christian  interest  is  secured  by  the 
simple  confession  suggested  above.  And  what  is  also 
of  much  importance,  the  one  thing  needful,  the  Christian 
attitude  to  Christ,  is  not  compromised  by  being  set  on 
the  same  level  with  something  which  has  not  primarily 
the  same  character  at  all. 

Another  objection,  not  quite  unlike  this  in  principle, 
is  that  the  confession  proposed  is  too  indefinite.  Almost 
any  one,  it  will  be  said,  might  adopt  it.  It  could  be  made 
by  an  Arian  as  well  as  by  an  Athanasian.  No  one  who 
has  assented  in  any  degree  to  the  argument  of  this  book 
will  be  puzzled  by  this  objection.  The  confession  which 
is  here  advocated  as  a  sufficient  basis  for  the  unity  of  the 
Church  could  not  be  made  by  any  one;  it  could  only  be 
made  by  those  who  take  up  what  the  most  careful  inves- 
tigation has  shown  us  to  be  the  Christian  attitude  to  Christ, 
and  it  can  be  no  part  of  our  intention  to  exclude  any  such 
from  the  Church.     The  differences  which  we  associate 


ARIAN  AND  ATHANASIAN  355* 

with  the  names  Arian  and  Athanasian  are  differences 
which  emerge  in  another  region  than  that  in  which  we 
confess  our  faith  in  Christ— in  an  ulterior  region;  and 
all  such  differences,  where  the  Christian  attitude  to 
Christ  is  maintained  in  the  sense  which  we  have  already 
made  clear,  must  be  dealt  with  by  other  means  than  ex- 
communication. Arianism  and  Athanasianism  both  give 
answers  to  a  question  which  multitudes  of  genuine  Chris- 
tians never  ask.  Once  it  is  asked,  the  mind  must  be 
allowed  to  find  the  answer  to  it  freely.  One  may  be  con- 
vinced, as  the  writer  is,  that  the  Arian  answer  is  quite  un- 
real, and  as  convinced  that  the  Athanasian  answer  explains 
nothing.  It  is  not  on  the  answer  at  all  that  a  man's 
Christianity  depends,  but  on  something  antecedent  even 
to  the  question;  and  it  is  this  antecedent  something — 
the  believing  Christian  attitude  to  Christ,  and  the  sense  of 
Christ's  unique  place  as  determining  all  our  relations  to 
God— it  is  this,  and  not  the  metaphysics  of  Christ's 
Person,  which  alone  is  entitled  to  a  place  in  the  creed. 
If  we  wait  for  unity  in  the  Church  till  all  Christians  ac- 
cept the  same  Christology,  we  may  as  well  give  up  the 
thought  of  unity  at  once. 

Many  minds  will  regard  it  as  a  more  serious  objection 
to  the  proposed  confession  that  it  ignores  much  which 
it  has  been  customary  to  identify  with  Christianity, 
and  which  they  would  be  inclined  to  affirm  with  emphasis 
just  because  it  is  so  often  called  in  question. 

Thus  it  makes  no  mention  of  the  supernatural  birth  of 
Christ:  it  has  nothing  corresponding  to  the  clause  in  the 
Apostles'  Creed,  'conceived  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  born  of 
the  Virgin  Mary.'  The  answer  to  this  would  be  on  the 
same  line  as  that  to  the  objection  that  there  is  no  sep- 
arate mention  of  the  Spirit.  It  is  not  intended  at  all  to 
dispute  the  Virgin  birth.  Everything  that  we  have 
seen  of  Christ  in  the  course  of  our  study,  every  impres- 


356  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

sion  that  has  been  made  on  us  of  His  solitary  greatness 
and  of  His  unique  relations  to  God  and  man,  is  con- 
gruous with  a  unique  presence  and  operation  of  God 
at  His  entrance  into  the  world,  and  adds  to  its  credibility. 
No  purely  historical  evidence  will  ever  make  the  super- 
natural birth  of  Christ  credible  except  to  a  mind  which 
has  already,  on  independent  grounds,  surrendered  to  the 
impression  of  the  supernatural  in  His  Person.  No  one  can 
deny  that  it  is  possible  so  to  surrender.  All  through  the 
earliest  records,  as  we  have  seen,  Christ  reveals  Himself 
to  men,  by  word  and  deed  and  influence,  in  that  character 
and  greatness  which  demand  and  evoke  faith;  He  reveals 
Himself  as  the  only  Son  of  God,  the  Lord  and  Saviour  of 
men,  and  wins  recognition  and  devotion  in  that  character; 
but  He  does  so  without  making  the  faintest  allusion  any- 
where to  the  manner  in  which  He  came  into  the  world. 
It  is  easy  to  find  reasons  why  He  should  not  have  done  so, 
even  assuming  that  the  gospel  narratives  of  His  birth  are 
true;  but  that  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  without  dis- 
closing the  secret  of  His  origin  at  all  Jesus  sought  and 
found  faith  from  men.  It  was  the  same  after  He  left 
the  world.  As  has  been  pointed  out  above  (p.  14), 
the  gospel  rested  on  the  apostolic  testimony  to  Jesus, 
and  the  testimony  did  not  reach  so  far  back  as  His  birth. 
It  covered  only  the  period  within  which  Jesus  was  mani- 
fested to  Israel — 'beginning  from  the  baptism  of  John 
until  the  day  when  He  was  taken  up'  (Acts  1 22).  We 
cannot  go  wrong  if  we  limit  the  fundamental  confession 
of  faith  to  the  character  in  which  Jesus  presented  Him- 
self and  was  afterwards  by  His  apostles  presented 
to  the  world,  without  introducing  into  it,  as  essential 
conditions  or  presuppositions  of  faith,  matters  of  fact 
which  originally  had  no  such  significance.  The  ques- 
tion which  Jesus  asks,  and  which  is  of  vital  importance, 
is  Who  say  ye  that  I  am  ?  not,  How  think  ye  that  I  came 


THE  RESURRECTION  357 

to  be?  No  doubt  the  two  questions  must  be  related 
somehow,  but  happily  it  is  possible  to  answer  the  first, 
by  assuming  the  Christian  attitude  to  Christ,  while  the 
other  remains  in  abeyance;  and  all  that  is  urged  here 
is  that  this  ought  to  be  recognised  in  the  confession  of 
the  Church. 

Other  two  objections,  which  would  be  serious  if  they 
were  well  founded,  must  also  be  referred  to.  The  first 
is,  that  no  mention  is  made  of  Christ's  resurrection. 
This  is  a  misunderstanding.  Christ's  resurrection  is  / 
assumed  when  we  confess  our  faith  in  Him  as  Lord.  ' 
We  do  not  believe,  in  the  sense  of  having  religious  faith, 
except  in  a  living  person,  and  the  term  Lord  expresses 
our  assurance  that  the  Person  in  whom  we  believe  not 
only  lives  but  reigns.  This  does  not  answer  every  ques- 
tion raised  by  the  resurrection;  indeed  there  may  be  many 
questions  in  this  region  which  it  is  beyond  our  power  to 
answer.  We  may  never  be  able  to  define  the  relation  of 
the  crucified  body  of  Jesus  to  the  body  of  His  glory,  to 
picture  the  process  by  which  the  one  was  transformed 
into  the  other,  to  rationalise  the  relations  of  the  two  modes 
of  being.  We  may  never  even  be  able  to  estimate  with  pre- 
cision the  meaning  or  the  value  of  the  New  Testament 
evidence  at  any  given  point.  But  the  soul  which  believes 
in  the  exaltation  of  Jesus  as  Lord  can  safely  be  left  to 
the  free  and  reverent  exercise  of  intelligence  on  such 
points. 

The  other  objection,  which  would  be  equally  serious 
if  it  were  true,  is  that  no  mention  is  made  of  the  atone- 
ment. If  by  the  atonement  is  meant  the  doctrine  that 
there  is  a  peculiar  connexion  between  the  death  of  Christ 
and  the  forgiveness  of  sins,  then  it  may  be  noted  that 
in  this  respect  the  brief  confession  of  faith  which  we 
have  in  view  is  at  one  with  the  so-called  oecumenical 
creeds.     There  is  no  mention  of  the  atonement  either 


358  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

in  the  Apostles'  Creed  or  in  that  of  Nicaea.  But  the 
objection  really  rests  on  a  misapprehension.  When  we 
confess  our  faith  in  Christ  as  Saviour,  it  can  only  mean 
that  we  owe  to  Him  our  reconciliation  to  God,  the  for- 
giveness of  sins,  the  power  of  a  life  like  His  own.  But 
these  are  the  very  things  with  which  the  doctrine  of 
atonement  deals.  It  is  an  attempt  to  understand  how 
Christ  achieves  these  blessed  results  for  us — what  He 
does  and  suffers,  and  why  it  is  necessary  that  He  should 
do  and  suffer  so  wonderfully  to  achieve  such  results.  It 
is  an  attempt  to  understand  the  cost  of  our  salvation  to 
Christ,  and  to  God  in  Christ.  In  so  far  as  that  is  sum- 
marily comprehended  in  His  death  it  is  an  attempt  to 
understand  the  death  of  Christ  as  something  deter- 
mined by  and  doing  justice  to  all  the  relations  of  God  and 
man  as  these  had  been  affected  by  sin.  It  is  the  central 
doctrine  of  Christianity,  the  deepest,  the  most  vital, 
the  most  difficult;  but  it  is  raised  by  the  believer's  ex- 
perience; it  is  not,  as  a  developed  doctrine,  the  condi- 
tion of  his  faith.  No  doubt,  when  we  think  things  to- 
gether, a  certain  experience  of  salvation  will  lead  to  a 
certain  construction  of  the  work  of  Christ;  but  every- 
thing in  its  own  order.  The  Christian  consciousness  of 
being  indebted  to  Christ  for  salvation — of  owing  Him 
what  we  can  never  repay — must  find  a  place  in  every 
confession  of  faith;  and  it  does  so  when  we  call  Him 
Saviour.  The  more  we  realise  what  it  cost  Him  to 
save,  the  stronger  will  be  the  appeal  we  can  make  for 
faith;  great  evangelists  like  Paul  and  Luther,  Zinzen- 
dorf  and  Wesley,  magnified  the  atonement  as  the  very 
heart  of  the  gospel,  and  delivered  it  to  sinners  'first  of 
all.'  But  every  Christian  interest  is  secured  by  a  con- 
fession which  ascribes  to  Christ  and  to  Christ  alone 
the  salvation  of  men.  What  it  cost  Him  to  save  can  be 
celebrated  in  doxologies,  declared  in  preaching  the  gos- 


CONCLUSION  359 

pel,  explored  by  devout  Christian  philosophy;  in  the  Creed 
it  is  sufficient  to  describe  Him  as  our  Lord  and  Saviour. 
In  all  this,  it  is  needless  to  say,  there  is  no  idea  of 
rediscovering  the  gospel,  or  of  disparaging  theology. 
But  the  state  of  mind  around  us,  both  within  the  Church 
and  without,  seemed  to  make  it  necessary  to  point  out 
the  bearing  upon  present  conditions  of  the  conclusions 
to  which  our  investigations  led.  The  Christian  religion 
has  never  existed  except  as  a  religion  giving  Christ  a 
place  which  is  all  His  own  in  its  faith;  it  has  never  ex- 
isted except  as  a  religion  in  which  Christ  was  both  to  God 
and  to  man  what  no  other  could  be,  and  determined  all 
their  mutual  relations.  Moreover,  Christianity  in  this 
form  is  not  discredited  but  vindicated  when  we  test  it  by 
appeal  to  the  consciousness  of  Christ.  It  only  gives  Him 
the  place  which  He  assumes  as  His  own.  It  is  the  same 
religion,  consistent  with  itself  and  with  the  consciousness  of 
Jesus,  all  through  the  ages;  and  what  we  need  for  that 
mutual  understanding  of  Christians,  which  is  itself  so 
urgent  in  view  of  the  present  distress,  intellectual  and  spir- 
itual as  well  as  material,  is  the  clear  perception  of  this 
truth,  and  of  its  necessary  consequences.  We  can  all  have, 
with  a  clear  intellectual  conscience,  the  same  religion— the 
religion  preached  by  the  apostles,  and  answering  to  the 
self-consciousness  of  Jesus— the  religion  in  which  Jesus 
holds  the  place  He  has  held  from  the  beginning,  the  only 
place  He  ever  consented  to  hold— the  religion  in  which 
we  recognise  Him  as  the  only  Son  of  God,  our  Lord  and 
Saviour :  we  can  all  have  the  same  religion — provided  that 
the  intellectual  questions  it  raises  are  left  for  the  free 
consideration  of  Christian  intelligence.  We  cannot  lift 
the  answers  to  these  questions,  ready  made,  from  any 
source;  not  even  from  the  New  Testament.  The  mind 
which  asks  them  is  the  only  one  that  can  answer  them; 
and  if  it  cannot  answer  them  for  itself,  they  remain  for  it 


360  JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 

unanswerable.  This  does  not  mean  that  one  mind  can- 
not help  another,  but  that  every  mind  is  independent,  and 
can  only  be  helped  by  what  recognises  and  confirms  its  in- 
dependence. The  thoughts  of  the  apostles,  whose  minds 
were  first  powerfully  stimulated  by  their  faith  in  Christ, 
will  always  be  a  help,  and  the  supreme  help,  to  Christian 
thought;  in  some  sense  they  will  always  be  a  standard  for 
Christian  thinking;  but  they  help  us  by  inspiring  in  us 
an  intellectual  interest  in  the  gospel  answering  to  their 
own,  not  by  imposing  their  thoughts  authoritatively  upon 
us  as  a  law  to  our  faith.  There  is  no  reason  to  fear  that 
the  frank  recognition  of  this — with  its  corollary,  the  aboli- 
tion of  subscription  to  theological  creeds,  such  as  now 
prevails  in  most  churches — would  imperil  the  gospel,  or 
any  Christian  interest.  On  the  contrary,  it  would  con- 
centrate interest  where  it  ought  to  be  concentrated.  It 
would  keep  the  religious  significance  and  claims  of  Chris- 
tianity in  the  forefront,  and  these,  though  in  no  sense 
opposed  to,  are  nevertheless  distinct  from,  its  theological 
presuppositions  or  problems.  A  church,  it  may  be  said, 
must  always  have  some  security  that  those  whom  it  puts 
in  places  of  responsibility — those,  especially,  whom  it 
entrusts  with  the  duty  of  teaching,  or  of  representing  its 
convictions  before  the  world — are  really  in  essentials  at 
one  with  it.  This  is  true  enough,  but  the  essentials,  as 
we  have  tried  to  show,  are  covered  by  such  a  non-theological 
confession  of  faith  as  has  just  been  proposed.  It  is  not 
the  signing  of  a  creed  which  keeps  men  true  to  their  re- 
ligion, but  something  quite  different.  The  men  who  drew 
up  the  confessions  which  we  sign  could  not  themselves 
sign  them  before  they  were  drawn  up.  The  Church 
which  set  them  to  their  task  might  properly  ask  them  to 
declare  their  loyalty  to  the  common  faith;  but  this  done, 
they  had  no  further  responsibility  to  men.  'I,  A.  B.y 
— so  each  of  the  Westminster  divines  gave  his  hand  as  he 


CONCLUSION  361 

joined  the  Assembly  which  drew  up  the  Westminster 
Confession — 'do  seriously  promise  and  vow,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  Almighty  God,  that  in  this  assembly  whereof 
I  am  a  member,  I  will  maintain  nothing  in  point  of  doc- 
trine but  what  I  believe  to  be  most  agreeable  to  the  word 
of  God;  nor  in  point  of  discipline,  but  what  may  make 
most  for  God's  glory,  and  the  peace  and  good  of  this 
Church.'  A  solemn  pledge  of  this  kind,  added  to  such  an 
unreserved  recognition  of  Christ's  place  in  the  relations 
of  God  and  man  as  has  been  the  characteristic  of  Chris- 
tian faith  from  the  beginning,  and  as  is  covered  by  the  form 
suggested  above,  is  surely  all  that  any  Church  can  wisely 
ask  from  its  ministers.  To  adopt  this  course  would  do 
more  than  anything  to  meet  the  intellectual  crisis  in  the 
Churches.  It  would  bring  an  immense  moral  relief  to 
many  who  are  in  the  Church.  It  would  remove  obstacles 
which  keep  many  outside  of  it.  It  would  restore  its  self- 
respect  and  its  honour  in  the  eyes  of  the  world.  It  would 
provide  the  only  reasonable  intellectual  basis  for  union. 
And  it  would  not  imperil  the  Christian  relation  to  Christ. 
Faith  lives  on  in  the  world  because  Christ  is  perpetually 
revealed  in  the  character  and  greatness  which  originally 
commanded  it.  We  believe  in  Him  as  Son  of  God,  as 
Lord  and  Saviour,  because  it  is  so  only  that  He  manifests 
Himself  to  us,  and  the  consciousness  that  our  faith  raises 
numberless  questions  which  we  may  never  be  able  to 
answer  does  not  shake  its  security  or  diminish  its  power. 
It  is  not  open  or  unanswered  questions  that  paralyse; 
it  is  ambiguous  or  evasive  answers,  or  answers  of  which 
we  can  make  no  use,  because  we  cannot  make  them  our 
own.  And  it  is  not  the  acceptance  of  any  theology  or 
Christology,  however  penetrating  or  profound,  which 
keeps  us  Christian;  we  remain  loyal  to  our  Lord  and 
Saviour  only  because  He  has  apprehended  us,  and  His 
hand  is  strong. 


INDEX    OF    NEW    TESTAMENT 
PASSAGES 


Matthew 

PAGE 

l1 

-       55 

2  15,  18 

•       56 

3  13  ff-         ! 

.     177 

3"f-          .   169, 

178,  179  n. 

317             . 

ijgn. 

4  1_u 

186  ff. 

423 

.       52 

5-7            !         ! 

214  ff. 

510            . 

217 

511             . 

215,  219 

512             . 

-     255 

517                   .2 

►05,  220,  303 

5  21  ff- 

217 

5  39  f- 

.     217 

6  16  ff- 

.     281 

<7  19 

221 

7  21  ff- 

222  ff. 

8 5  «•          . 

226 

810 

-     3l6 

820 

260 

98 

-     274 

913 

205,  220 

9315 

-       52 

10 

192  ff. 

10 14 

.     198 

10 16 

-     i99 

10 i7  ff-     . 

.    196,  199  f. 

10 22 

.     297 

lQ32ff.            .       2OI 

,    203,    213, 

219  f.  S 

556,  264,  3°3 

lQ38f. 

209,  295 

Matthew — continued. 


1039 

10  42 

ll2-19 

ll5 

Hl2f. 

11" 

11  1«  f- 

11  20  ff. 
H25ff. 

12  • 

12  24^2 

12  27  f. 
12  28 
1229 

12  30 

12" 

1235f. 
12  40 

12  «  f- 

12  «  ff. 

15  *  ff- 

16  18 
16  2<  ff- 
16" 
16  * 
16 28 
ls,; 

19 28 

20  19 

20 28 


200,  210  f.,  216 


228  ff. 
271, 


234 
281 


273 

-  235 

-  235 
237,    258 

231,247,271 
237*1. 
249 
283 
248 
284 
187 

247  *?• 
54,  248,  262 
222 
261 

249 
205 
281 
[94 
294 
2 1 1 
203, 225 

-  3*7 

27,234,297 
194,300 

-  »97 

299  >.'■ 

220 


363 


364 


JESUS  AND  THE   GOSPEL 


Matthew — continued. 

Mark — continut 

a*. 

PAGE 

PAGE 

21 23  ff* 

.          228 

4  10 

.         194 

22 2 

.          282 

6  7-n       ! 

193,     I96 

23  34  ff- 

251    ff. 

611             . 

.          I98 

24  9 

200,   297 

6  <5  f- 

.         285 

24 14 

•              52 

7  *  «- 

28l,286 

24  27,  37,  39,  44 

264 

7  31  ff- 

.         169 

24  s6 

192 

8  22  ff • 

.         169 

25  31-46 

.          225 

8  27  ff • 

53,  286,  307 

26  13 

-              52 

8 29  ff- 

-     159 

26  3i  f.        . 

•          133 

831             . 

292 

26  s2 

-          134 

s34^1 

-     294 

26  M 

•         327 

8s5 

211 

28  7 

133   f» 

837 

-     3°4 

28  9  f- 

-          138 

838                     1 

62,  172,203 

28 10 

-          133 

827-1045.i62ff., 

172  f.,284ff. 

28  16  ff  •       -         i 

33,135^39 

91 

-     327 

28 18 

.          238 

910             - 

291,293 

9  30  ff. 

-     291 

Mari 

c 

931 

-     292 

i1          -      : 
i2 

J2,54, 179  w- 
•     233 

932 

g  33-50 

-     299 
296  ff. 

12f. 

.       54 

9s5 

.     194 

I4 

-     179 

939 

-     297 

^  9-11 

177  ff. 

940 

.  248  f. 

J  12  f . 

186  ff. 

941 

-     297 

1" 

52,192 

9^ 

.     227 

1  1«  ff- 

.      159,  271 

10 17 

-     154 

1  29  ff. 

•     159 

10 29 

.     297 

2  "" 

271  ff. 

10 32 

-     194 

2  10-28 

.     256 

JA  32-45 

298  ff. 

217             ! 

•     3°3 

1033       ! 

.     292 

2  18-20 

279  ff. 

10 45       .  53, 

162,303,317 

228            ! 

-     273 

11  '-10 

307  f  • 

3  13~19 

192  ff. 

1111 

.     194 

3  17 

•     194 

11  27  f- 

.     228 

3  20  f. 

-     205 

12  J"12 

308  f. 

321 

.     154 

12  »  «• 

-     3*1 

327 

.     187 

13  2 

3IO,325 

3  28  ff- 

263,283 

13  3  «•        . 

-     i59 

3  31  «• 

.     205 

13  9 

200,  297 

INDEX 


36; 


Mark — continued. 

PAGE 
I96 
55,316 
200,    297    f. 

315  »• 

54,  239,  245,  263, 

3*3,  3*Sn- 

55,315 

.  194 

-  194 

.  194 

3i5  ff. 
134, 136,  160 

.  134 
.  194 

•  325 

•  325 
326  ff. 

-  i54 
34,  i36>  l6° 

.  134 
146 

•  139 


Luke 


61 
.   61 

.  184 
169 
177  ff. 
186  ff. 
.  61 
.  225 
214  ff- 
•  255 

275  »• 
.  217 
.  218 
222, 224 
226 
228  ff. 
-  237 


Luke — continued. 

PAGE 

9  *  «•         .        .         .     196 

95 

194,  198 

Q  23-27 

-     294 

924 

211 

926             ! 

■     203 

927 

.     327 

950            ! 

248  f. 

951 

.     298 

954 

•     194 

9s6 

■     303 

958 

260 

10  »  "•       . 

196 

10  13  f- 

2k 

51,247 

10 21  f- 

•237  f. 

10 23  f- 

.     250 

ll1 

.     281 

ll20 

-       ^s4 

11 21 1- 

.       187 

ll23 

.247  ff. 

11 30 

261 

11  M  f- 

.      249 

11 « 

275   "• 

J  J  49-51 

251   ff. 

12  8 

>02,  255,  264 

12io 

262, 283 

12  40 

.       264 

12  49  f- 

220,  298,  303 

13  * 

•        223 

13  2«  f- 

222  f. 

1  O  28-30 

.        226 

13  3< f- 

251   ff. 

L4" 

207 

1427 

-        294 

16  16 

-        235 

1  7  24.  2«.  30 

264 

17" 

20c 

,   2IO  t 

1829 

.     »97 

LgM 

-     299 

19  l0 

205, 303 

l9u 

2 

20,  3OO 

366 


JESUS  AND  THE  GOSPEL 


Luke — continu 

\ed. 

John — continu 

ed. 

PAGE 

PAGE 

20 « ff  • 

.         228 

12  16 

-         307 

21 12 

200,  297 

12  » 

.       88 

21 17 

200,  297 

12 47 

85, 220 

22 24"27 

3°°>  3°3 

13  19 

.         -       83 

22 29 

.     300 

14  9f. 

.         -       83 

22 30 

-     194 

16  12 

.       78 

22 66-70 

-     326 

17 2  f- 

82,  83 

22 69 

•     327 

18 37 

220 

24 19 

.     218 

19 34 

87,  89 

24  36  ff  • 

-     139 

20  19  H- 

-     139 

24  39  ff- 

129,131 

20 23 

.       86 

24  "  f  • 

.       62 

20 31 

82,  139 

24 49 

.     136 

Acts 

24 52 

.         .       63 

l4 

.     131 

JOHls 

r 

l7 

192 

^  1-12 

.      81 

1 21  f-          .     14, 

56,162,356 

i i2       !     ! 

.      80 

2 

117  f. 

i  m  ff- 

-       79 

221             . 

22,43 

i16        !     ! 

.       80 

222             . 

14,  54 

i18       . 

80,  84 

223             . 

.       17 

J  29 

.       86 

224             . 

in 

3         !     ! 

.         .   87  f. 

2s3 

18,43,101 

318             . 

.       84 

238             . 

18 

317            . 

.         -       85 

321             . 

-       i7 

429 

.     225 

4 12 

16,  22,  298 

442 

.         -       85 

5 30            !         \ 

-       i7 

520             ]         '. 

.     239 

531 

.     no 

5  21  «• 

.       84 

541 

.       46 

6 

.         .   87  f. 

726 

.     105 

615             . 

286  n. 

10 36      \     ! 

•       15 

653            . 

-       59 

10 38 

-       54 

6* 

.       89 

10 39 

.       17 

S24 

83, 203 

10 4i 

•     131 

828 

83, 203 

10 42 

no 

858 

•     203 

10 43 

.       16 

104 

-     133 

11 i5-17    . 

-       17 

10 10 

82,  220 

12 i2 

•     J57 

10 30 

.       84 

15 8            . 

-       17 

10<o 

.     228 

185 

.  120  n. 

11  «• ff-       . 

.87,89 

19 2 

-     353 

INDEX 


367 


PAGE 

20  7 

Romans 

.          IO3 

l4 

.         . 

.          I05 

l7 

m 

22 

l16 

. 

•       295 

325 

. 

-       37 

510 

.         , 

-       37 

5  12  ff. 

a 

•       30 

63 

. 

.       88 

64 

, 

-     105 

g28 

. 

.     238 

10  9 

. 

21 

10 13 

. 

22 

I 

Corinthians 

l3 

#        . 

22 

28 

. 

.  21, 

46, 105 

311 

. 

22 

321 

. 

■     238 

7  10,35 

. 

.     321 

91 

. 

•     105 

Q  16 

m 

1 20  ?i. 

11  23   ff. 

. 

3J9  f- 

12  3 

, 

.  21  ff. 

124"* 

. 

•       43 

131-* 

. 

224 

15 

„ 

.  102  ff. 

15 3 

. 

17,37 

154"8 

. 

-     i37 

15 5 

. 

.     194 

15  "  «• 

m        , 

120  ff. 

15  27  f- 

. 

.  258 

15 28 

. 

22 

15  «  «• 

. 

30 

15  51 

. 

107 

2 

Corinthians 

l2 

. 

22 

l19 

,         . 

21 

1 20 

. 

16 

3 

. 

. 

•     3*9 

2  Corinthians — continued. 


5l3f. 

PAGE 

1 20  ft. 

5  14~21 

. 

. 

•       37 

5lfl 

. 

. 

19 

S9 

. 

. 

.    36 

ll4 

. 

. 

21 

Galatians 

l1 

. 

. 

.     23 

l3 

. 

. 

22 

l8 

. 

. 

.     26 

2»'« 

, 

. 

.     210 

3  13 

. 

. 

17,37 

Ephesians 

l7 

. 

. 

.    38 

1  19  f. 

m 

m 

106 

2 18 

. 

. 

43 

320 

. 

. 

106 

525  ff. 

. 

. 

.     282 

Philippians 

2  5«- 

. 

.  36 

,304ft. 

321 

. 

106,  129 

COLOSSIANS 

land  2 

. 

. 

-       32 

2° 

. 

. 

.       33 

4  10 

. 

. 

•      157 

1 

Thessalonian 

s 

l1 

. 

. 

22,  29 

l5 

. 

. 

120 

39 

. 

. 

29 

3  "• 12 

. 

. 

-       29 

42,   18 

. 

. 

.       29 

5  12,  18,  2 

8 

. 

-       29 

510  .         .  29,37 

2  Thessalonians 

1   ■  .  -  22,  2Q 

1 12         ...     99 


:; 


2    TlMoTHY 


29 
157 


368 


2  13 

Ver.  24 

l4 

2«ff. 

59 

y  19,  22 

86 

g  12,  14    15 
Q23 

10  * 

12  * 

13  20 

21 

27 

49 
412 

5  7-8 
5  13"18 

1 2, 3 
1" 

1  18  f. 
I  20  f. 

2 21  «. 

315 

3  I8-4  6 

322 
513 

l1 
21 

l1 
l1^ 
l3 
l7 


JESUS  AND  THE  GOSPEL 


Titus 

Philemon 
Hebrews 


James 


Peter 


Peter 


1  John 


43,  1 


PAGE 
48 


157 

41 
258 

41 
41 
41 
41 
41 
42 

41 
41 

45 

46 

46 

225 

46 
46 

43 
254 
43 
48, 227 

43 
43 
43 
43 
157 

47 
47 

162 

77 
72 

73 


1  John — continued. 

22 
2  5  f. 
2  12 

2  18-22 
2  22 

2  23  f. 

2 28 

3  2f. 

3  16 

43 
49 

4  10 
414 
417 

56 
5iif. 

520 

Ver.  7 
Ver.  7 


2  John 

3  John 


Jude 


PAGE 

73 
86 

74 
73 
75 
75 
72 

75 

75 

305 

75  f. 

73  *. 

86 

74 
75 
87 
72 
72 

75 


46 


Ver.  4 

. 

. 

47 

"  20 

. 

.    . 

49 

»  24 

f. 

. 

49 

Revelation 

l10 

m 

. 

■  103 

1  12  ff. 

. 

m 

,   68 

2  and  3 

m 

m        , 

66  ff. 

314 

. 

. 

■   7o 

19  9 

. 

. 

.  282 

19 10 

. 

. 

66,  70 

19  13 

. 

. 

.   70 

20 6 

m 

. 

.   7i 

21  9 

. 

. 

.  282 

22  9 

m 

. 

-   7o 

22 20 

. 

. 

.   68 

Date  Due 


'■  9  •%-■■ 


0  19  '42 


__L 


^gssaas 


10  v 


■^tWW"-8*? 


_ 


Is 


w*-^ 


.1c 


*— 


'wtffr0&tm*** 


_ 


■■" 





